European Commission’s Green Deal demands ‘irrational’: Polish Agriculture Minister
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26.02.2024, 19:08
European farmers demonstrating on the side of a meeting of EU agriculture and fisheries ministers in Brussels, Belgium, February 26, 2024. The farmers are protesting to highlight their declining incomes, overly complex legislation, and administrative overload. Photo: PAP/EPA/OLIVIER MATTHYS
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The European Commission imposed large, irrational, and costly demands of the Green Deal, meant to serve the environment and counteract climate change, but in reality, they led to a lot of farms ending up bankrupt, Poland’s Minister of Agriculture Czesław Siekierski said on Monday in Brussels
“This is not to say that we should not act toward protecting the climate, but that it needs to be done in a different way,” Minister Siekierski told the press following a meeting with his EU counterparts. “The EC must verify its plans.”
Monday saw the conclusion of a protest by farmers, who objected to the EU’s agricultural policy. The farmers used 900 tractors to blockade the district of Brussels where European institutions are located, and vowed that they would return to the EU capital if their demands were not met.
Minister Siekierski said that in line with the demands of Polish farmers, he appealed that the policy of compulsory fallowing of agricultural land is abandoned in 2024 and that in subsequent years the fallowing be made voluntary and comes with monetary compensation to the farmers.
He also suggested to his colleagues that the administrative requirements for crop rotation be simplified and that the EU does not penalize farmers for making mistakes, but only if a deliberate effort to abuse the system for monetary advantage is made.
As he stressed, farmers know well how to conduct crop rotation and take care of the livestock, and Brussels should not define rules on how they should do those things.
According to Poland’s Minister of Agriculture, another reason for the EU-wide farmers’ protests is the opening to imports from outside the bloc. Siekierski said that the influx of agricultural produce from Ukraine is making EU crop production unprofitable, not only in Poland but also for farmers in other EU member states, and called for introducing regulations in the sphere of commercial exchange between Ukraine and the EU, and Poland in particular.
“The Poles, Poland, people living in the countryside, farmers - we all assisted Ukraine, the Ukrainian people, and we want to continue to do so,” he said. “But we must differentiate between humanitarian aid, military aid, and economic matters, commercial exchange, which needs to be conducted on the basis of rational, normal principles in accordance with the laws of the market, of the economy,” stressing the need for financial support for the farmers, and pointing out that they are burdened with the costs of the Green Deal and the opening to out-of-EU imports without any fault of their own.
“We all know this and the European Union cannot pretend it did not happen,” Poland’s Agriculture Minister stressed.
He furthermore pointed out another growing problem, i.e. the growing stockpiles of grain in the EU.
According to the figures cited by Siekierski, by the end of June, EU’s grain stockpiles will balloon to 28 million tonnes, of which 9 million will be stockpiled in Poland alone.
“We produce about 35-36 million tonnes of grain, so we will have about 25% of grain in storage,” he said, stressing the need to sell it to ensure available storage space in granaries.
“The question is: how [to do it]? The EU should undertake actions to support the sale of European, and also part of Ukrainian grain,” Siekierski said, suggesting that the EU could offer subsidized transport of the produce or buy it out and use it for humanitarian aid purposes around the world.
