European Farmers Protest Aggressively...
But look what happens in Canada when a few truckers protest in Ottawa. The Liberal communist party of Canada wants China style control, seizing farmers guns, people's right to protest and now speech.
Europe allows protest even as unpeaceful as this. The Canadian truckers strike was a peace of cake in comparison but what did our communist government do? They brought in Emergency Meaures Act, confiscated truckers vehicles, fined them, seized their bank accounts and put many in jail. Shame on Trudeau and the Liberal communist party of Canada.
European Farmers Have Had Enough
In the last 12 months, the cost of running Jean-Marie Dirat's lamb farm in southwest France has jumped by 35,000 euros ($38,000), driven up by increasingly expensive fertilisers, fuel, electricity and pesticides.
Money is so tight that this year he won't pay himself. To his surprise, he even calculated he would be eligible for the minimum welfare benefit, given to society's poorest.
"My grandfather had 15 cows and 15 hectares. He raised his kids, his family, without any problem. Today, me and my wife, we have 70 hectares, 200 sheep, and we can't even pay ourselves a salary," Dirat told Reuters at a roadblock made of hay bales that barred access to a nuclear plant.
Other farmers in the French southwest, where a nationwide movement started, complain about red tape and restrictions on water usage, as well as competition from Ukrainian imports let into the European Union to help its economy during the war.
Farmers elsewhere in Europe are similarly disgruntled, with protests in Germany, Poland, Romania and Belgium coming after a new farmers' party scored highly in Dutch elections.
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen's lieutenant Jordan Bardella blames "Macron's Europe" for the farmers' troubles. Le Pen herself says the EU needs to quit all free trade deals and that her party would block any future agreements, such as with Mercosur countries, if it wins power.
Worryingly for French President Emmanuel Macron and other EU leaders, opinion polls show farmers' grievances resonate with the public. An Elabe poll showed 87% of French people supported the farmers' cause and 73% of them considered the EU was a handicap for farmers, not an asset.
National governments are scrambling to address farmers' concerns, with France and Germany both watering down proposals to end tax breaks on agricultural diesel. The European Commission also announced new measures on Wednesday.
But the protests could amplify a shift to the right in the European Parliament and imperil the EU's green agenda. Poll projections show an "anti-climate policy action coalition" could be formed in the new legislature in June.
"The far-right's strategy is to Europeanise the conflict," Teneo analyst Antonio Barroso said. "Farmers are a small group, but these parties think they can attract the whole rural vote by extension."
"Europe is putting us on a drip to let us die silently," Pierre Poma, a 66-year old retired farmer in Montauban in the southwest, told Reuters.
He joined the RN a few years ago and ran for a parliamentary seat in 2022, garnering 40% of the votes compared with the 15% Le Pen's party won in the same constituency in 2017.
Poma, who used to grow peaches, pears and apples, says he had to sell his house because he could not turn a profit. He blames red tape and the EU's farm-to-fork strategy he abhors.
After visiting farmers' motorway blockades in recent days, he is confident like-minded parties will be a force to reckon with in Brussels after June.
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