Wave of farmer discontent not over as far-right sets the stage for EU elections

The backlash against EU green policies is set to continue, with plans to revive farmers’ protests ahead of June’s European elections and an expected surge in support for the far-right in rural areas. 

As EU countries witnessed farmers pull up their tractors in major cities and blockade borders to protest against new EU rules for the sector, conservative leaders have sought to position themselves as farmers’ biggest allies.

Among other grievances, the farming sector has protested against the economic and administrative hurdles linked to the bloc’s green rules, prompting the European Commission to propose relaxing some of the environmental requirements of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). 

Meanwhile, a recent report by the Committee of the Regions (CoR) confirmed that farmers could become an important vote pool for far-right parties in the forthcoming elections.

Brussels’s European Quarter has witnessed no less than three demonstrations since the start of the year, and a radical farmers’ group is now threatening to bring tractors back to the heart of Europe a few days before the EU elections, which take place on 6-9 June. 

The Dutch Farmers Defence Force (FDF), founded in 2019 in response to demonstrations of animal activists in the Netherlands, is calling farmers – or, as they put it, “warriors” and “fighters” –  to join a protest on 4 June.

“If we want to throw off that [green] yoke from Brussels, we will have to get to work!” says their press release from 12 April. 

Asked about the timing of the protest, the organisation’s spokesperson told Euractiv they want to be close to the EU elections “and make people aware of the possibility to vote for a different future”. 

According to FDF, farmer groups from ten different EU countries will participate, including France’s Coordination Rurale, Spain’s Plataforma 6-F, and Germany’s Land schafft Verbindung (LsV).

Coordination Rurale, the farming union most hostile to the French government, confirmed to Euractiv their willingness to associate with the movement.

Meanwhile, Polish farmers plan to take to the streets of Warsaw again on 10 May after months of intermittent protests across the country and blockades at the border with Ukraine. 

Poland has been a hotspot for farmers’ discontent, and the government’s efforts to appease them have proven insufficient. 

The aim of the protest, organised by the trade union Solidarnośc, is clear: to kill off the EU’s green agenda, as illustrated in the poster featuring a hand punching a green skull. 

The far-right stirs up the scene

Far-right leaders across the bloc have seized the opportunity to jump on the bandwagon of farmers’ protests, positioning themselves as the safest bet for rural areas.

According to Andrés Ródriguez-Pose, professor of economics and geography at the London School of Economics, the far right has found in rural areas a vast pool of potential votes.

“Regions with the most economic decline are those where discontent has grown the most,” he told Euractiv, adding that this is being exploited by anti-establishment and populist parties. 

Far-right leaders’ strategy for mobilising rural areas resembles the war rhetoric used by the Farmers’ Defence Force and Solidarnosc – it’s all about ‘punching’ the EU rules.

In Spain, Santiago Abascal – whose far-right party Vox (part of the ECR family) has the most support in rural areas -, has said that farmers are “on a war footing”. 

He has described the Green Deal and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals as a “death threat” to the sector, adding that whoever supports them is “the enemy of the countryside”. 

Similarly, Jordan Bardella – a firebrand leader of French far-right Rassemblement National (part of ID in the European Parliament) – has repeatedly accused the EU of trying to “kill” agriculture, saying that farmers’ protests were “the cry of people who don’t want to die”. 

Lessons for June

Recent electoral experiences in Europe seem to confirm forecasts of a shift to the right in the upcoming elections, and rural areas are expected to be a key voting pool.  

In Portugal, far-right Chega (ID) quadrupled its seats in the elections on 10 March and tightened its grip in rural areas.

In Poland, where regional elections took place on 7 April, the national-conservative Law and Justice PiS (ECR) scored 43% of the votes in rural areas. 

“It’s the revenge of those places that [feel they] don’t matter,” said Ródriguez-Pose, adding that rural areas are trying to gain visibility by “throwing themselves” at the more extreme parties. 

“If you lose all hope, then you revolt against the system,” he added, pointing to a “development trap” hampering economic prospects in the countryside. 

[Edited by Angelo Di Mambro and Zoran Radosavljevic]

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