EU offers more environmental concessions to farmers
BRUSSELS — The European Union’s executive arm on Friday proposed weakening even more climate and environmental measures in the bloc’s latest set of concessions to farmers apparently bent on continuing disruptive tractor protests until the June EU elections.
Angering environmentalists across the 27 EU member states, the Commission proposed to further loosen rules imposed on agriculture which it said, not so long ago, were instrumental to the bloc’s strategy to become climate neutral by 2050. That iconic challenge put the EU in the global vanguard of fighting climate change.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen insisted that the EU’s overall climate goals remained intact, even though she stressed she would “continue to stand steadfastly by our farmers, who maintain
EU food security and serve at the frontline of our climate and environment action.”
Under the proposals, the conditions to move farming to become more climate friendly were weakened or cut in areas like crop rotation, soil cover protection and tillage methods.
Small farmers, representing some two-thirds of the workforce and the most active within the continent-wide protest movement, will be exempt from some controls and penalties under the new rules.
Politically, the bloc has moved rightward over the past year.
The plight of farmers has become a rallying cry for populists and conservatives who claim EU climate and farm policies are little more than bureaucratic bungling from elitist politicians who have lost any feeling for soil and land.
The Christian Democratic European People’s Party of von der Leyen has been among the most vocal and powerful in defending the farmers’ cause.
“I would actually call it populism,” said Green MEP Thomas Waitz, saying the Commission proposals would cut deep into the agricultural commitment that is part of the EU’s vaunted Green Deal to reach climate neutrality. “Now they try to deflect the anger of the local farmers and instrumentalize it against the Green Deal.”