{"id":301952,"date":"2024-02-16T10:51:33","date_gmt":"2024-02-16T09:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=301952"},"modified":"2024-02-16T10:51:36","modified_gmt":"2024-02-16T09:51:36","slug":"farmers-are-in-revolt-and-europes-climate-policies-are-crumbling-welcome-to-the-age-of-greenlash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=301952","title":{"rendered":"Farmers are in revolt and Europe\u2019s climate policies are crumbling. Welcome to the age of \u2018greenlash\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Brussels is ditching green measures as EU leaders panic over rural protests, upcoming elections and the threat of the far right.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ursula von der Leyen\u00a0surrendered to angry farmers\u00a0<\/a>last week faster than you could shake a pitchfork or dump a tractor-load of manure outside the European parliament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The European Commission president, expected to announce her\u00a0candidacy for a second term<\/a>\u00a0heading the EU executive next week, told lawmakers that the commission was withdrawing a bill to halve the use of chemical pesticides by 2030 and would hold more consultations instead. The Guardian<\/a> has the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The proposed measure was a key plank in the commission\u2019s European Green Deal<\/a> and its Farm to Fork strategy,<\/a> intended to make the EU carbon-neutral by 2050, make agriculture more environmentally friendly and preserve biodiversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Von der Leyen\u2019s sudden U-turn on one of her signature policies was not just an attempt to defuse a spreading continent-wide rural revolt over rising fuel costs, burdensome environmental regulations, retailers\u2019 price squeezes and cheap imports. It was also a sign of growing panic among the EU\u2019s mainstream parties over the seemingly inexorable rise of far-right nationalists ahead of the June elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Von der Leyen, a former German defence minister, is vying to lead the centre-right European People\u2019s party\u2019s campaign for the elections even though she is\u00a0not herself seeking<\/a>\u00a0a European parliament seat. Her coronation at a party congress on 6-7 March as the EPP\u2019s\u00a0Spitzenkandidaten<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(lead candidate) to run the commission from 2024 to 2029 is a formality, since there is no other contender. But she has had to water down her green policies to placate a party so spooked by the \u201cgreenlash\u201d against net zero legislation that it is rushing to reposition itself as the voice of gradual adaptation at a pace that citizens can accept and afford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EU leaders tried to take another contentious issue off the table by agreeing in December on a long-stalled migration pact<\/a> that includes stricter external border controls, faster procedures for processing asylum seekers and expelling those whose applications are rejected, and sharing the burden of the refugee crisis among EU countries. But populists such as the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orb\u00e1n, continue to rail against being forced to choose between admitting unwanted migrants and paying for other countries to take them in under the new system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have seen unpublished opinion polling conducted for the European parliament in January that showed Eurosceptic, sovereigntist or populist parties have taken the lead in eight of the 27 EU members, and are in second place in four more. Moreover, the countries where the far right is polling most strongly<\/a> include those with the most seats in the legislature \u2013 Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Romania and the Netherlands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is getting scary, and events such as the farmers\u2019 furore are playing into the hands of populists such as France\u2019s Marine Le Pen, Germany\u2019s Alice Weidel and Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, who thrive on grassroots grumbling against the metropolitan elites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe (pesticides) proposal has become a symbol of polarisation,\u201d von der Leyen<\/a> admitted to parliament in Strasbourg. \u201cTo move forward, more dialogue and a different approach is needed.\u201d She may have been slamming the stable gate after the horse has bolted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farmers have traditionally voted for mainstream conservative and Christian Democratic parties, while the socialists and social democrats had their bastions in industrial urban areas. Remember former president Jacques Chirac, the Gaullist farmers\u2019 friend, jovially slapping the hindquarters of cows in his southwestern Corr\u00e8ze constituency or at the annual Paris agricultural fair. Nowadays, those voters are more likely to vote for Le Pen\u2019s National Rally, recent polls suggest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In France, the centre-right Republicans, Chirac\u2019s heirs, are polling at barely 8%, while the National Rally stands above 30% in latest surveys, and anti-Islam ideologue \u00c9ric Zemmour\u2019s even further right Reconquest! bags another 6-8%. Le Pen\u2019s list is led by the charismatic 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, already an MEP and party president, while Zemmour\u2019s is topped by Le Pen\u2019s niece, Marion Mar\u00e9chal, 34, a favourite of US far-right political strategist Steve Bannon<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Netherlands, farmer discontent over curbs on nitrogen emissions led to the sudden rise of the Farmer-Citizen Movement<\/a>, a party that came from nowhere to win the most votes in regional elections last March. Many of those protest voters have since switched to Wilders\u2019 Freedom party, which topped the poll in a general election in November and has gained more ground since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Appeasing rural revolt may stop farmers blockading motorways or burning bales of hay outside government offices, but it is unlikely to herd them back towards the mainstream centre-right, given the depth of their discontent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the full story here<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brussels is ditching green measures as EU leaders panic over rural protests, upcoming elections and the threat of the far right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":301958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Brussels is ditching green measures as EU leaders panic over rural protests, upcoming elections and the threat of the far 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