Greens in the European Parliament have called on the Commission to take action on agriculture ahead of June’s EU elections, as a new survey confirms the growing power of eurosceptic parties in rural areas, Euractiv informs.
The Greens sent a letter to the European Commission on February 5 demanding action on EU agriculture. On the same day, a report by the Committee of the Regions (CoR) confirmed strong Eurosceptic voting trends in rural areas across the EU. The Greens have become the latest party to pledge to defend the interests of the agricultural sector amid farmer protests across Europe and approaching European Parliament elections.
In France, newly appointed Prime Minister Gabriel Attal met with farmers in one of his first official stakeholder meetings. His Italian counterpart chose a farmers’ market fair for her first public appearance since winning the 2022 elections.
The Greens also declared that relaxing environmental rules was not the way forward and reaffirmed their commitment to fighting climate change and protecting biodiversity.
The root of the problem is clear: the majority of farmers simply cannot make a living from their work.
The European Commission is being requested to take a number of actions to address imbalances in the food chain, such as introducing a windfall tax on agricultural products. Other measures include strengthening the EU’s Unfair Trading Practices Directive, which bans resale at a loss, and investigating agrifood oligopolies. The Greens are also calling on the EU leadership to halt negotiations on an EU-Mercosur free trade agreement, arguing that it would put them at a competitive disadvantage.
The report by CoR confirms fears that farmers could become an important source of votes, as results indicate that the anti-European discourse is highly supported in rural areas.
“Some EU policies have inevitable disproportionate impacts on rural areas.”
The CoR’s commission for natural resources (NAT) discussed these findings on Monday. Isilda Gomes, chair of the NAT commission, called for EU cohesion reform and a common agricultural policy to address “the absence of sufficient public services in rural and remote areas”.
Nicola Caputo, agriculture minister of Italy’s Campania Region and CoR rapporteur for an opinion on risk management in agriculture adopted last week, stated that the perception of remoteness in rural areas reinforced “a feeling of the uselessness of [the] EU model.”
If not addressed, [this feeling] can make the laborious construction of the dream of a common home vanish in no time.
