FARMERS blocked roads on the Belgium-Netherlands border today, choking freight from the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam bound for destinations across Europe.
And they tightened a blockade of the Zeebrugge port, blocking British produce as well as unrelated imports, mainly cars.
The blockades, coming a day after farmers protested in Brussels, hurling firecrackers and eggs at the European Parliament, show the revolt by farmers over rising costs and falling living standards is far from over despite wide-ranging concessions by the EU and multiple member states.
French farmers’ unions called off a siege of Paris on Thursday after ministers promised concessions, including on fuel taxes, biodiversity requirements (such as leaving a percentage of farmland fallow each year) and imports, even within the European Union — with French farmers having seized lorries and burnt Spanish agricultural produce they were transporting last week.
But farmers’ leaders said the protests would resume if the promises were not rapidly delivered on.
The European Commission also promised loosening of environmental requirements to qualify for subsidies, and a limit on imports from Ukraine, which have been blamed for lowering prices by Polish farmers. But given rising input costs linked to the Ukraine war (sanctions on Russia and its ally Belarus having driven up prices of fuel and fertiliser) and the worsening effect of droughts and floods on crop yields, the squeeze on farmers’ living standards is set to continue.
In Germany, MPs today approved a budget containing cuts to farmer subsidies despite weeks of tractor protests across the country, alongside other spending cuts including an end to subsidies for electric cars. As in Greece, German ministers have postponed abolition of tax rebates and exemptions on farmers’ fuel but refused to drop them.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition has had to scramble to rework its budget after the constitutional court ruled its reallocation of Covid-19 emergency spending to other areas was illegal, leading ministers to seek billions in new spending cuts.
Mr Scholz also vowed to defend a proposed free trade deal with the South American Mercosur bloc, though opposition from farmers fearing being undercut by cheap imports has led French President Emmanuel Macron and Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to announce they have turned against the agreement.
