Thousands of Spanish farmers used tractors to block main roads and streets in several cities across the country for the fourth day in a row to protest EU agricultural policy.
Farmers demand the implementation of measures to reduce production costs and increase earnings and competitiveness from non-EU countries.
Similar protests have been held in France, Poland, Greece and other EU member states in the past few weeks.
Farmers claim that environmental and other EU policies represent a financial burden, which makes their products more expensive than imports.
The European Commission has made certain concessions to farmers, including abandoning plans to reduce the use of pesticides and other hazardous substances.
The European Commission has recommended that the European Union cut its net greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent by 2040, an ambitious target that will test political appetites for tackling climate change ahead of EU elections.
While the overall target was within the range recommended by the EU’s official climate science advisers, the EU executive weakened the agriculture part of the recommendation in response to weeks of protests by farmers angry about the EU’s green rules, among other complaints.
The EU’s previous draft target stated that agriculture would have to reduce non-CO2 emissions by 30 percent by 2040 compared to 2015 levels in order to comply with the overall climate target. That item was removed from the final draft.
“We have to make sure we have a balanced approach,” European Commissioner Vupke Hoekstra told the European Parliament as he presented the proposal.
“The vast majority of our citizens see the consequences of climate change, want protection, but are also worried about what it means for their lives,” he added.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced at the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg that she will withdraw the proposal for a regulation on the sustainable use of pesticides (SUR), which has met with fierce criticism, and that she will publish a new, “more mature” proposal, which should reduce farmers’ dissatisfaction.
In June 2022, the European Commission proposed new rules for the sustainable use of plant protection products, which include the Regulation on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides (SUR).
The decree proposed a 50 percent reduction in the use of pesticides by 2030. The proposal is part of the “from field to table” strategy, which intends to direct the existing EU food system towards a sustainable model and contribute to achieving climate neutrality by 2050.
According to the proposed regulation on the sustainable use of pesticides proposed in June 2022, the use of pesticides is expected to be halved by 2030.
Last year, that regulation was rejected by the European Parliament with 299 votes against, 207 in favor and 121 abstentions, and it is currently being negotiated by member states.
The President of the EC warns that withdrawing this proposal does not solve the problem, which still remains.
“We need a dialogue and a different approach, and based on that, the Commission will make a new, much more mature proposal, in the drafting of which the interested parties will be involved,” Von der Leyen said.
She added that farmers will only invest in the future if they can live off the land, “and only if we achieve our climate and environmental goals together will farmers be able to continue to live.”
This decision by Von der Leyen was preceded by large protests by farmers in France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania and Italy.
In the original draft of the document, it was planned to reduce the emission of these gases by 30 percent by 2040, while agriculture, which accounts for 10 percent of carbon emissions in the EU, was designated as “one of the key areas for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the EU by 2040”.
Those points are no longer there, but the goal of reducing carbon emissions by 90 percent by 2040 compared to 1990 remains.
Photo: archive
