In a number of European Union countries, mass protests are escalating among farmers who are dissatisfied with Brussels’ measures in the agricultural sector, inflation and the uncontrolled import of cheap foreign products, including from Ukraine.

Thus, in Greece, farmers blocked a highway with the help of 120 tractors, public television ERT reports. In addition, they earlier held a rally at TIF - Thessaloniki International Exhibition Center, arriving there on 300 tractors from the northern part of the country. Hundreds more farmers arrived by bus. As part of the campaign, producers poured boxes of chestnuts and apples onto the road.

As reported by RIA Novosti with reference to local media, the main forces of farmers are in Karditsa, where more than a thousand tractors are located, another 500 machines of farmers are observed near the city of Larisa, in Ptolemais - 200 tractors, Kastro Viotia - 170, and in Kouloura Imatias and Derveni - 150 each. Another 100 tractors each - in Mudanya and Trikala, 70 - in Kalambaka and 50 - in Epanomi.

The organizers of the protests promise to continue the protests, accusing the authorities of “not responding to the basic problem of survival” raised by farmers and not giving them the opportunity to “continue farming.”

In particular, on February 5, farmers of the Halkidiki peninsula intend to head to Thessaloniki to block the area around the Ministry of Macedonia and Thrace, where they want to submit a petition with their demands.

In addition, farmers in Greece will seek nationwide coordination of the blockade.

Massive farmer protests also swept across France. In Paris, in front of the Eiffel Tower, on February 3, a demonstration was held in support of French farmers and against EU policies, including against the provision of €50 billion to Ukraine. During the rally, its participants tore a large EU flag and then trampled it to the cheers of the crowd. The organizer of the action was the leader of the French Patriots party, Florian Philippot, who stressed that the country's President Emmanuel Macron “will not decide anything about dishonest imports from Ukraine, especially poultry meat,” since this depends on the EU leadership. According to him, “this is hypocrisy” when they decide to give Ukraine €50 billion for four years - more “than French farmers receive in aid.” Similar statements were made at the protest by farmers who are dissatisfied with the assistance to Ukraine and believe that this could lead to the collapse of “all farms” in France and other EU countries.

  • Farmers in France dumped manure on the road

  • © AP Photo/Fred Scheiber

Demonstrations are also observed in Germany, where farmers on tractors blocked the entrances to Germany's largest airport in Frankfurt. It was planned to involve about 2 thousand units of agricultural machinery in this action.

Earlier, mass protests by farmers were also reported in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, and Portugal. In addition, similar promotions were announced in Slovakia and Poland.

"All over Europe"

It is worth noting that the situation with demonstrations by agricultural workers in Europe worsened after on January 31, the European Commission proposed extending the abolition of customs duties and quotas on Ukrainian exports to the EU for a year, “while simultaneously strengthening the protection of sensitive agricultural products.” This was announced by Deputy Head of the European Commission Margaritis Schinas, emphasizing that Brussels plans to take such a measure based on the EU’s “obligations to “support Ukraine as long as necessary.”

As Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said later that day, the European Commission should protect EU farmers suffering from Ukrainian dumping, not Ukraine. According to him, the leadership in the European Union must change, since “the current leaders will never make decisions that benefit farmers.”

“We need to find new leaders who will truly represent the interests of the people,” TASS quotes Orban as saying.

In addition, he believes that the import of Ukrainian agricultural products to the EU should be stopped, since this puts European farmers at a disadvantage and incur losses.

In turn, the Deputy Prime Minister of Italy, the Minister of Infrastructure, the leader of one of the ruling League parties, Matteo Salvini, told ANSA that he sees the reason for the mass protests of farmers in the “catastrophic” policy of the European Commission, led by Ursula von der Leyen, who is in favor of maintaining her post. he would not vote in the upcoming elections (elections to the European Parliament are due in June 2024. -

RT

).

“Tractors have taken to squares all over Europe, and the problem for them is the current European Commission. Ursula von der Leyen’s commission from this point of view is a disaster in terms of labor policy and rights,” TASS quotes Salvini.

"Uncontrolled dumping"

As experts note, the spread of mass protests by farmers throughout the EU is primarily due to the fact that more and more farmers began to realize that Brussels is more important than the well-being of the Kyiv regime than its own citizens.

“This is especially true for the countries of Eastern Europe, but other EU states are also extremely concerned about this aspect, since in the European Union a significant part of the producers are small agricultural enterprises, which find it more difficult to survive with such uncontrolled dumping provoked by large agricultural holdings in Ukraine. Therefore, the Ukrainian factor plays a significant role in these processes,” explained Alexander Kamkin, senior researcher at the Center for Comparative and Political Studies at IMEMO RAS, in an interview with RT.

A similar opinion is shared by Oleg Nemensky, a leading researcher at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, who called the opening of agricultural markets on favorable preferential terms for Ukrainian agricultural products one of the “important motivating motives” for farmers’ protests in the European Union.

“The first demonstrations on this basis arose in Poland, then they spread across a number of countries that border it. After all, benefits for Kyiv affect the state of the agricultural market of the entire EU, since Brussels’ decision on a duty-free regime for a number of food products from Ukraine concerns absolutely all EU countries. And this is a big blow to the entire EU agricultural market. Now farmers in different parts of Europe are increasingly aware of this,” Nemensky said in an interview with RT.

  • Farmer protests in Italy

  • AP

Alexander Kamkin calls another reason for the escalation of protests among farmers in the EU the approaching planting season and the realization that Brussels is in no hurry to make concessions.

“Farmers don’t have much time left to make themselves known—then they will be busy in the fields. And this avalanche effect associated with demonstrations in a number of European countries at once is partly due to the fact that people want to have time to remind of their demands. And farmers have something to blame for the EU leadership, whose policies have led to a decrease in the profitability of many of them, both due to competition with Ukrainian goods and due to the rise in prices of fertilizers that were previously supplied from Russia,” Kamkin explained.

He does not rule out that the protests could spread to other EU countries, since the solidarity of agricultural producers “has not been canceled.”

“After all, they are all on a single market with common regulatory mechanisms, and if crisis phenomena are observed in one country, then this automatically boomerangs across other EU states. All this will certainly affect the prices of agricultural products, since producers need to ensure a break-even point. The already difficult economic situation in the EU will worsen,” Kamkin said.

In turn, Oleg Nemensky predicted that European manufacturers “will simply go bankrupt” if Brussels does not help them adapt to the new reality, and also does not reduce the volume of Ukrainian imports into the EU market.

“So factors related to the desire of the union leadership to help the Kyiv regime are very important. And so far in Europe they don’t know how to deal with all these problems,” the expert concluded.