Farmers across the EU are in revolt – Brexit gave British farmers a lucky escape

From Poland in the east to Portugal in the west, the EU’s farmers have had enough

Photos credit: Wikimedia Commons, Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2024

A Facts4EU.Org summary of the EU agricultural landscape and why British farmers should be relieved

On Tuesday (13 Feb 2024) the EU Commission graciously granted the EU’s farmers a temporary and partial reprieve from some of the more draconian EU laws they have been facing. The Commission did so in response to mass demonstrations by farmers from across the bloc.

Thanks to Brexit, British farmers have not had to face the same restrictions, although ‘Retained EU Laws’ (REUL) which have not been repealed mean that there is still some way to go before our farming industry can fully recover. Meanwhile, the UK’s National Farmers Union which appears to represent mostly large landowners continues to be pro-EU.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

The EU’s farming revolt

Cities across the EU have been blockaded by thousands of tractors
In France the farmers have threatened to starve Parisians within three days
Many countries have been affected, including France, Germany, Holland, Poland, Italy, and Portugal
There are many reasons for the protests – all of them stem from the EU’s rules

Years late and millions of euros short,
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday:

“Only if our farmers can live off their land will they invest in the future. And only if we achieve our climate and environmental goals together, will farmers be able to continue to make a living. Our farmers are well aware of this. This measure offers flexibility to farmers while continuing to reward them for their crucial work to drive EU food security and sustainability. We will soon come forward with more proposals to help alleviate the pressure our farmers face.”
- The EU Commission President, 13 Feb 2024

"I welcome the decision to grant a partial exemption from GAEC 8 – and I believe it will also be welcomed by many farmers across the European Union."
- Janusz Wojciechowski, Commissioner for Agriculture, 13 Feb 2024

The EU Commission is now dictating how EU land is used

It’s no wonder the EU’s farmers are up in arms. They are now faced with a massively growing number of rules, regulations, and reporting requirements – all because of Ursula von der Leyen’s ‘Green Deal’.

To continue to receive funding from the EU’s bloated ‘Common Agricultural Policy’ (CAP), farmers “must now respect an enhanced set of nine standards” which the Commission deems are “beneficial to the environment and climate”.

This principle of conditionality applies to almost 90% of the utilised agricultural area in the EU. The set of basic standards is referred to as ‘GAEC’s, which stands for “Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions”.

The EU Commission’s new dispensation for farmers is merely temporary. It will expire at the end of this year.

Observations

In short, the custodians of agricultural land across the EU, providing food for the population, are now being dictated to by a bunch of bureaucrats in Brussels who have probably never been near a crop field or cattle shed in their lives.

All of these EU rules and regulations stem from Ursula von der Leyen’s “Green Deal”. Right across the EU the farmers are quite rightly up in arms.

The Commission had no choice other than to postpone some of their rules in the face of a growing popular revolt. All the Commission has done is punt this down the road, however. These farmers are not going anywhere. The hands that feed the bureaucrats are very likely to bite again.

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Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Thurs 15 Feb 2024

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Reader Comments 18

11. jon iivesey , Thursday, February 15, 2024, 18:12:

Alternatively, you could claim that if we were in the EU the domestic, non-trade part of the economy could have grown by an extra 5%, but if it is not trade-related growth we would have to consume our own extra production, so we would need 5% more consumers, who would also be the 5% increase in workforce needed to grow the GDP by his 5%. 5% of 60m is roughly three million. So is that the magic Sparky/EU secret plan? To dump another three million of the EU's unemployed o the UK and then claim that the EU "grew" the UK economy by 5%? Is that what everyone wants?

12. jon iivesey , Thursday, February 15, 2024, 18:18:

2. Sparky , "Facts4EU have conveniently missed last week the UK Farmers are using tractors to stage a slow protest in the Port of Dover about the use of cheap imported food in Britain following the trade deals done after Brexit."
Cheap imported food is a bad thing? Farmers said the exact same thing back in 1846 when the Corn Laws were repealed and imports of cereals from Australia and the US were allowed. Farmers always want to exclude imports because imports are competition for them. By the way, Sparky is now admitting that yet another Remainer prediction is wrong, because Remainers predicted food prices would go up after Brexit, and now he is complaining that they have gone down.

13. jon iivesey , Thursday, February 15, 2024, 18:47:

2. Sparky , "And don't forget the comment by George Eustice in Nov 22 who helped secure the Australia Trade agreement of Dec 21. He told a Commons debate that it was "not actually a very good deal for the UK"."
And George Eustice was dead right. Cheaper food imported from Australia instead of expansive food imported from the EU is good for the UK because it reduces the food bills of families.
Who is the Government supposed to be working for, for 60m consumers or for a tiny number of British farmers? Who is supposed to be running the country, 60m voters, or a tiny farming lobby?
Who is Sparky working for, the British worker or the rich British farmer?.

14. Sparky , Thursday, February 15, 2024, 20:23:

13 JL. Your comments remind of Boris Johnson when he said “f*** business”

15. KB , Thursday, February 15, 2024, 21:38:

Sparky: we are not self-sufficient in food. A lot of it has to be imported from somewhere, so why limit ourselves?
The current situation is we are not charging tariffs on EU food imports, but we are charging tariffs on food imports from many other countries.
The only people being helped by this are EU farmers, not UK farmers (because they can't supply 100% of our food), and certainly not consumers.
At a time of high inflation, we should be playing off suppliers from all over the world, not being a captive market for EU produce.

16. jon iivesey , Thursday, February 15, 2024, 22:06:

14. Sparky , "13 JL. Your comments remind of Boris Johnson when he said “f*** business”" Then you are just stupid. Manufacturing and finance like Brexit. The two biggest engineering companies in the country, BAE and RR,have both seen a doubling of their stock prices in the past year, not due to speculation but due to real increases in sales and profits and real increases in staffing, as Gazza, I think, pointed out recently.
The people who don't like Brexit are the farmers, because they imagine they were "protected" by EU tariffs, which were just an additional tax on the consumer, and they imagine they were being given big subsidies by the EU, when in fact the money came from the UK taxpayer, via Brussels, and the farmers now do not want to face competition from cheaper imported food..
By revealing that you are representing farming interests, Sparky, you have given the game away. You do not represent ordinary British people at all. You represent a small number of well-off farmers who want to charge us EU prices for UK-grown food.
Putting your comments together over several months, just about everything you post is consistent with that. You want EU restrictions on what we can buy and eat, EU regulations, EU labels, EU tariffs, CAP taxes on consumers, "EU" subsidies for farmers, VAT payments into the EU budget, and EU control of NI.
Now that you have let it slip, what you post all points in the same direction.

17. Ashley Great Britain , Friday, February 16, 2024, 07:12:

2 Sparky.
-
Brilliant, Please show me the cheaper food so I can buy it!
UK farmers just need to start selling at fair prices and standing on their own two feet, Or they can go for producing specialist food that people will love and pay for.
They need to adapt and use the land space they have and find a stock item that pays.
On that subject I've seen farmers who are doing just that. They no longer use pesticides or fertiliser as crop rotations and animals do the maintenance work for them, working in harmony with nature has always been the ONLY way.

18. georgie , Sunday, February 18, 2024, 23:55:

cheap imported food from the rest of the world rather than the EU is far far worse for the consumer and the environment. Having worked in the EU the UK and Australia, cheap Australian food and cheap Canadian food is full with GM products and pesticides that were long banned in the EU and the UK and will only be good for cancer rates in the UK is that good for the ordinary people ? it's undermining their health and the environment in the country's that that food comes from and it will be far worse in other places, Just stick to the policy we had before where high quality food produced in the UK competied with high quality food produced in the EU. Supporters of these shoddy trade deals do yiou comprehend the Environmental damage and the conditions of the animals , in Australia it is a disgrace to see those poor animals being transported to abatoire's crammed in on very hot days, it has long been banned in Europe and the UK and to see the pesticides they use which are really very toxic and again long since banned n the UK and the EU. Maybe you just don't care? . The protest in Europe Union and in the UK are primarily about being undercut by trade deals with other parts of the world which are not farming to the same high rigorous protecting standards both for animals people and the environment, the secondary Factor is he green deal of the EU which in itself is not a bad thing because climate change is here as any farmer can tell you but it has to be done in a more sensitive way i by Brussels. If the rest of the world were acting as responsibly as the EU and the UK the Farmers wouldn't be protesting because they would be up against it . What happens to our food supply chain if a war breaks out when it comes from halfway across the world isn't it more intelligent to continue producing as much food as possible in good conditions in the UK and supplementing that with equally good food from the EU

18 comments, page 2 of 2

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