Farmers have moved centre-stage in the current election cycle, and that includes the distant—but scheduled—European Union elections. In fact, the European People’s Party has put farmers front and centre of its unofficial campaign. According to a paper published by the party in May:
The EPP is and will continue to be the voice and defender of European farmers and our rural communities. We see agriculture as a strategic sector, delivering food security in Europe and beyond as much as it plays a crucial role for the vitality of rural communities and economic viability of rural areas.
The paper goes on to state that the party rejects the proposed policies most odious to farmers—the nature restoration directive, carbon capture targets for farmers, and drastic cuts in pesticide use.
In recent wranglings in Parliament, the EPP party has stuck to its platform. In May, it led the movement in the agriculture and fisheries committees to reject the Commission’s proposed Nature Restoration directive and then walked out of negotiations on the text in the environment committee.
Agriculturalists, from wheat growers to dairy farmers, have become the most vocal group against the current avalanche of regulations designed to force the bloc into a new, supposedly more environmentally friendly model of production and consumption under the banner of the Green Deal. It’s no wonder, since their sector has been targeted by a long list of directives, some new and some to be updated with tighter, obligatory targets. At the same time, some old regulations are being enforced in member states, such as nitrogen targets for Natura 2000 conservation areas in the Netherlands, causing consternation and controversy by paralysing construction in the country as well as threatening farmers with forced closures and buyouts.
Facing a regulatory vice grip, farmers have mobilised. In the Netherlands, years of tractors parades finally galvanised into the Farmer Citizen Movement (BBB) political party which won a major victory in the country’s provincial elections in March.
The party’s win in the Netherlands shows that, though a tiny constituency in numbers, farmers carry political weight and know how to use it. Additionally, it demonstrates that their concerns are shared by a wide section of society.
“Many people sympathise with farmers, not just in rural areas, but also in smaller cities, in more peripheral areas,” Wouter van der Brug, a professor of political science at the University of Amsterdam, told Politico. “The proposed reforms of the farming industry are a symbol of those rapid changes that people object to.”
Likely realising he faced a similar rebellion, Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo recently called for putting additional Green Deal regulations “on pause.”
On the European level, the agriculture lobby has come out in full force against the agriculture-related provision of the Green Deal, hosting a slew of events to give platform to the farmers’ perspective.
Farmers are feeling particularly marginalised by Brussels. Even as farming’s future is being decided by the EU Commission, the president of Copa-Cogeca, the European agricultural lobby, complained at a press conference in April that the Commission was being aloof and uncommunicative with the farming sector.
Most of the directives are being handed down through the EU’s environment or health and food safety directorates general instead of through the agriculture directorate general, which is both more conservative and has a historic and deep relationship with the sector.
The overall situation has made farmers an important lever in both ideological controversies and upcoming elections, whether for national governments or EU institutions.
While it’s not surprising that a centre-right political party would come to the rescue of industry and livelihoods threatened by regulation as this aligns with the general economic stance of the political Right, it remains to be seen whether the EPP’s position as the defender of farmers will benefit the party when EU Parliament elections are held next June.
According to Politico’s recent poll, at the moment, the EPP is predicted to lose seats, dropping from its current 177 to 161 seats. Many of those lost seats are predicted to go to the political groups just Right of the EPP. The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) stand to win an extra 13 seats while Identity and Democracy (ID) group could gain five.
Farmers are a sector that the ECR group, too, is well-positioned to woo. Besides its rejection of the directives opposed by the agriculture industry, it has a working group dedicated to carbon-capture solutions, one of the areas where farming is also targeted, whether through “carbon farming” or the restoration of peat bogs drained to become agricultural land.
The group is also hosting an exhibit on plant breeding at the parliament building in Strasbourg from June 13th to 15th that “will welcome farmers who will discuss their farms, crop and challenges.” “Young” scientists will also be at the event “to inform citizens of the role of technology in the context of food security, food safety and the long-term sustainability of food production.”
In fact, Green Deal skepticism is growing. There are those who are wary of ever-increasing environmental regulations affecting life in both city and country, and those leery that an energy transition to wind, solar, and hydrogen will ultimately prove unworkable.
While EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, once a centre-right politician, has staked her EU legacy on executing the Green Deal, over-regulation may prove a deal breaker.
When asked about the EPP’s courting the farmers’ vote, Tom Vandenkendelaere, an EPP Belgian MEP and member of Flemish conservative party CD&V, replied:
You cannot deny that the farmers vote, but more broadly, that rural areas are becoming very much a centre of political attention for political parties across Europe.
Winning that vote, though, looks to be a battle of the Rights.
