Tractor Wars: The farmers’ protests and the 2024 European elections

From late 2023, farmers across Europe have engaged in increasingly confrontational protest actions, from mass blockades of capital cities and border crossings, to even a bomb attack on a regional government building in Carcassonne, France. In southwestern France, a farmer and her young daughter were killed in an accident near a blockade point. With European elections set for summer 2024, some politicians across the continent from European Commission President von der Leyen down, are rapidly trying to placate, while others are trying to co-opt, the protests.

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The reasons for the protests

The grievances behind the protests differ with the country, and even the region. Nonetheless, certain common threads can be drawn. Recent plans to? increase taxes on fuel (as in France) or phasing out of fuel subsidies (as in Germany) for the agricultural sector have been an immediate cause. Anger at feeling being underappreciated and unheard – in cities, in governments, and in the EU – permeates the demonstrations. Concerns over the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy and European Green Deal have long been present among farmers, from the bureaucracy (a researcher at IREF, a French think tank, found that farmers spend on average 9 hours a week on forms), to the argument that EU obligations to increase biodiversity via crop rotation, devotion of at least 3-4% of arable land to non-productive features and reduce chemical fertilisers are making European agriculture less competitive with exports. In several countries, notably the Netherlands, but also in Ireland and Belgium, Government measures to reduce polluting nitrogen emissions, most of which come from agriculture, led to the closing of livestock farms and culling of livestock. In eastern European countries, such as Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, farmers have blockaded border crossings with Ukraine in protest that measures to support Ukraine by allowing it to export grain export agricultural products without being subject to the same level of EU regulations would undercut local farmers’ competitivity.

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The politics of the protests

Eyeing local and European elections in June 2024, and faced with the more immediate disruption of blockades of tractors and vehicles on highways across the continent, and farmers holding rallies in the centre of national capitals, incumbent leaders are seeking to show that they are in listening mode and action mode. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has “strategic dialogues” with 27 delegates from farming groups, NGOs and financial institutions, and spoke of the “urgency” needed to find a “new way forward”. France and Germany have backtracked on their planned fuel tax policies. New French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced measures such as simplification of ‘red tape’ and faster payments of emergency aid to farmers with livestock affected be epizootic haemorrhagic disease. However, at time of writing, farmers’ unions do not appear satisfied.

Opposition politicians in several countries, particularly, but not exclusively, on the populist right and from Eurosceptic parties, have been trying to ally themselves with the farmers for electoral gain. Populist politicians, many of whom are not from rural backgrounds and have at times been viewed with suspicion from more traditionally conservative rural communities, have seized on the protests, seeking to extend and connect their populism to agrarian issues. This is achieved by tying often quite specific grievances on fuel subsidies and fertiliser emissions into broader macro-level cleavages, often infused with nativist themes, between the ‘out of touch’ globalist elites in national government and Brussels versus ‘our’ ordinary ‘forgotten’ local people. In what could be interpreted as an attempt to reclaim that mantle, in a meeting with farmers, Attal said the French Government had “heard” the farmers, spoke of “food sovereignty”, that without its farmers, that France “is no longer France” without its farmers, and of the importance of protecting “our heritage and our identity”.

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Although the percentage of farmers in western European countries is generally less than 5% of the population, the proportion is much higher in eastern Europe. Furthermore, according to European Commission data, around 28% of French and 16% of Germans live in rural areas. 66% of the Netherlands is agricultural. Many rural residents sympathise with the farmers’ grievances, and poll data indicates a large proportion of populations (over 65% in Germany and over 80% in France) currently support the blockades. Agricultural issues are therefore likely to be a major battleground in the upcoming elections.

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Future risks

?Politicians should also be wary of seeing the grievances as belonging to a relatively small (albeit vital) part of the population. Protest movements, and how their grievances are framed, can rapidly metamorphose and expand into wider anti-government movements, often becoming more radicalised in outlook and sometimes more extreme in action. Recent evidence can be seen in the Yellow Vests (Gilet Jaunes) movement in France. Initially starting in late 2018 as a petition by motorists in peripheral towns protesting a fuel price increase, the movement (insofar as it was organised) gained mass and enduring appeal in France by adopting a ‘big tent’ anti-Macron platform, and continually extending, amplifying, and adapting certain framings of their grievances according to changes in national or international events, such as police brutality or Covid-era restrictions. Indeed, groups on Telegram channels have also sought to link the farmers’ protests with other flashpoint issues, calling for multi-issue anti-government demonstrations, protesting, inter alia, farming issues, aid to Ukraine, and conspiracies about Covid-19 masks and vaccines.

In extreme cases, the protests have turned incendiary and personal: in Germany, some protestors carried gallows with symbols of the coalition hanging from them, and in early January 2024, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck was blocked by protestors from leaving a ferry. The presence of such extremist symbols and actions have been widely denounced by many politicians and farmers’ unions. The German Agriculture Minister warned of the protests fomenting deep divisions and a Manichean mindset “like in the USA” of sides accusing each other of “evil” and refusing any dialogue.

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As the European elections approach, many European leaders are rightly taking the protests seriously, as, in addition to great disruption, these protests do have the potential to serve as a symbol – and a catalyst – for wider opposition.

Archie Philipps