Last week I wrote about the elections of the European Parliament and about the possibility that the populist parties, also labelled as right or extreme right parties, may make significant gains, and even come first in some countries. These parties are also generally anti-EU, and in most cases, anti-immigration, if not xenophobic.
The root of this disgruntlement with the traditional parties and the EU is economic. The effects of significant gains by the populist parties will also be economic.
I wish to link to this, the recent protests by farmers in a number of countries, which are suiting these populist parties just fine, as they continue to fuel a sense of malaise about the way governments of some EU member states are managing their economy.
A protest by farmers in the EU may cause some disbelief, given that one of the fundamental initiatives of the precursor of the European Union, the so-called European Common Market, was the Common Agricultural Policy, which guaranteed a certain level of income to farmers. This had led to the ‘butter mountain’, the ‘milk lake’, and so on, as there was an oversupply of a number of agricultural goods. In turn, this has led to a curtailment of the funds allocated to farmers.
Farmers are protesting today that, because of cheap imports, the income from their agricultural produce was insufficient. Moreover, their costs have increased because of new regulations aimed at protecting the environment. As such, the reason for the farmers’ protests is again economic.
Why do I write “Something is not quite right”?
EU governments need to address a number of issues to ensure their economic policies favour the common good
The maligned Common Agricultural Policy did not just guarantee a minimum income to farmers. It also ensured that Europe produced its own food requirements, a key strategic objective in the context of geopolitics. A country that does not produce its own food requirements can always be held to ransom by those countries that supply the food.
The CAP also ensured the development of rural areas, in a continent that over the last two centuries had lost significant parts of these areas to building development.
The farmers are protesting that the EU is fast losing self-sufficiency in the production of its own food and fast losing rural areas to urban development. They are angry at the pressure from governments to produce less after years of encouragement to produce more. On this issue, the EU institutions probably need to revisit their decisions.
However, I believe that by doing so we would be just scratching the surface. The more fundamental issue is a lack of economic direction at EU level and at the level of national governments. Although the financial crisis of 2007 seems like light years in the past, we are still feeling the negative impact of the way that was handled.
The public has borne the brunt of that recession, and the increase in inflation in the last 18 months or so has piled up the pressure. EU governments need to address a number of issues to ensure their economic policies favour the common good. It cannot be right that after each economic crisis of the last 20 years, income inequality has increased.
I fear that the farmers’ protests are just the tip of the iceberg.