Is the EU broken? Farmers in Europe feel very much at the heart of the EU with the Common Agricultural Policy part of the original coal and steel industries at the start of the common market after the war.
Europe was very short of food and farmers were supported to increase food production. This went on for over 30 years before Europe began producing too much food. Remember the butter mountains and the wine lakes?
But I belong to that generation of farmers who feel that our primary role is to produce food.
The trouble with the EU is that it has been very averse to free trade, especially in agriculture and when I chaired the EU agriculture committee in 2007 to 2009, I was quite appalled at the levels of protection even though as a farmer I benefited from some of the protections.
Farmers in Europe are feeling threatened, writes Neil Parish
Reuters
So as the years have gone by, even Europe has opened up trade and EU farmers feel threatened by it.
Brussels is considered by the farmers as the bureaucratic capital of the world, so all of this leads to huge frustration, and this boils over into protests.
Pascal Lamy was a free-trading Frenchman, but he is a very rare breed of Frenchman.
Most of the larger established Political Parties within the Eurozone are very pro-EU, especially France, Germany, Spain and Italy. So, is it any wonder that farmers organise their own parties that are branded by the EU-centric press as right-wing?
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Farmers outside European parliament
Reuters
They aren’t particularly right-wing they just want some independence from the EU. Does it remind you of anyone? At least in Britain, we have a mainstream party that not only questioned the EU but Brexited.
So, farmers in Europe belong to many more Co-Operatives both for selling their produce and buying their tractors and means of production.
It also means they’re well organised and good at coming together and blocking roads and bringing cities to a standstill.
They are well supported by many of the countries’ citizens and really have good grassroots support and many European countries really love their food so it is very much about identity and national pride.
Farmers protest in Europe
REUTERS
The EU in its desire to concentrate political power in Brussels and Strasbourg has left its people behind and so in its present form is broken.
There has always been a very good argument for a large European market, but political union was never what the French, German, Polish, or any of the countries of the EU, citizens ever wanted.
It was the desire of a centrally based political elite that has driven this ever-closer union coupled with a European Commission that must intervene and interfere in most parts of people’s lives.
So, these protests by farmers are deep rooted and part of a much bigger problem for the EU of being overbearing, over-bureaucratic and out of touch with its people.
If the EU doesn’t loosen the reins and let member states have more independence it will implode.