Farmers get the world, climate gets the shaft
Protesting farmers today lit fires around the EU summit and tore down an iconic EU Quarter statue. In response to their violent antics, President von der Leyen has gifted them concessions.
The farmers’ protests that have been taking place across Europe over the past months came to Brussels this week, with tractors blocking the main ring road around the EU capital. They are protesting declining profits, which they say is due to the influx of tariff-free agricultural products coming in from Ukraine as well as new EU requirements to use land in ways that combats climate change. Today they took their protest to the heart of the EU quarter as prime ministers and presidents met for a summit to overcome Viktor Orban’s veto on EU aid to Ukraine (spoiler alert: they did). In the middle of their rage-(and, reportedly, alcohol)-induced rampage, they tore down a beloved 150-year-old statue at the center of Place du Luxembourg (nicknamed Plux, the square outside the European Parliament which is a popular weekday socialising spot for the Brussels bubble). The photo taken by Yves Rouyet of the statue toppled like it was Sadam Hussein (one of the side plinths, ironically depicting a unionising iron worker) has shocked the city.
Even before this act of vandalism, the farmers protests in Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Poland and France had resulted in concessions by the European Commission. Yesterday, as a horde of tractors threatened to descend upon Paris, President Ursula von der Leyen announced she is suspending the most significant greening provision from the 2021 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform, the setting aside of fallow lands. It will be suspended until at least 2025. Without these rules, it leaves the CAP just as polluting as it was before the 2021 revision. During my 14 years in this town I’ve covered three rounds of CAP revisions, and it was a pretty depressing thing to witness. The powerful French agricultural lobby managed to kill green reform the first two times, but 2021 was a breakthrough. Now, that breakthrough may be tossed out the window. Today the president announced she will put forward a proposal to reduce “red tape” being faced by farmers in the next three weeks.
While the farmers’ protests have been happening across Europe, they have been most ferocious and politically alarming in France. That has, in turn, provoked a panicked response from the government which has seen the government trying to deflect blame toward Brussels. Agriculture is sacred in France, and farmers are powerful. The CAP accounts for one-third of the EU budget, and French farmers are the biggest beneficiary. So obviously, they don’t want it to change. Paris takes an almost obsessive interest in designing and defending the CAP. It is a policy devised by French farmers, for French farmers. So it was a bit strange to hear the new French prime minister Gabriel Attal on Tuesday night saying that in response to the protests he will ask for an “agricultural exception” to CAP rules for French farmers, just like France has a “cultural exception” in place for its language and culture not to be subject to single market and state subsidy rules. Why would they they need an exception to the policy they themselves designed?
But the readiness of EU leaders to make concessions on this subject isn’t just down to the power of farmers lobbies. Whether it’s the gilets jaunes, the farmers or other reactionary protests, politicians seem all too ready to give in to violent protests against climate action while they condemn violent protests for climate action. The same happened in France with the yellow vests, when French President Emmanuel Macron pulled the fuel tax. But when have violent far-left climate protests ever resulted in increased climate policies? If anything, the extremist actions of groups like Extinction Rebellion seem to continually provoke a backlash among policymakers, especially those from the centre-right who are increasingly tempted to make climate part of the culture wars. But even for the centre-left, I’ve never seen violent climate protests result in a policy response in the climate’s favor. The difference in reaction, it seems, is part of a wider trend of Europe drifting to the right, with emboldened far-right groups pulling the center in their direction.
As she watched the square below her office burn, European Parliament President Roberto Metsola, from the center-right European Peoples Party, did not immediately condemn the violence. Instead she said: “We see you, we hear you. If you want your voice to be heard, make it heard also in June, when you vote for the European Parliament elections.” The EPP does not want to alienate these populist forces, and some in the party are hoping to ride the anti-climate-law train all the way to the bank ahead of the. EU elections.
Von der Leyen is also from the center-right EPP. Her decision to scrap the environmental requirements came after reported exchanges between her and Macron earlier in the week, where it is assumed he put pressure on her to offer something to the farmers (his government has spent all week trying to deflect blame onto Brussels).
It isn’t an isolated incident. Over the past months, von der Leyen’s EPP has been putting pressure on her to abandon elements of her Green Deal, starting with their revolt against a Nature Restoration Law. Von der Leyen very clearly wants a second term, and for that to happen she is beholden to three forces: Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and the EPP. Scholz, an irrelevance in Europe these days, doesn’t present much of an obstacle. He may be from the centre-left, but he is not going to pass up the opportunity to keep a German in the presidency. However when it comes to the other two, von der Leyen is very clearly vulnerable. If Macron told her to scrap the green agriculture requirements, she doesn’t have much choice but to accept if she wants a second term. Her re-appointment depends on national leaders, and is impossible without the support of the French president. On the other hand, a complete abandonment of the green deal, one of her signature policies, could also doom her re-appointment. But looking at the way the political winds are blowing, she clearly faces more risk from staying loyal to the green deal than she does from betraying it.
Von der Leyen is also waiting for the endorsement of the EPP as their “spitzenkandidat” a now-defunct system that was used in the 2014 election cycle to elect Jean-Claude Juncker as part of the elections (it now continues on in zombie form). If the EPP were to select someone else, it would doom her (even though there isn’t even a pretence that the system is being used to select a Commission president any more).
All of this is making environmental campaigners here in Brussels very nervous. The last three years has seen a dizzying rush of climate legislation as part of von der Leyen’s green deal. We already know that the next term, whoever is president, will be about implementation rather than new targets and new legislation. But the big question is whether the new requirements will be watered down, or if the Commission will be lax with member states on their soon-due National Energy and Climate Plans due soon, the drafts of which have been found to be outrageously noncompliant with EU climate goals.
Does this week’s quick climate cave-in to the farmers suggest a willingness from von der Leyen and her commission to abandon climate goals to satisfy the rightward drift of the public? If so, is this a temporary phenomenon until she can secure reappointment, or would this characterise her second term? At this juncture, it’s difficult to tell.