The European Union’s executive body adopted a resolution on Tuesday allowing farmers to use certain land set aside for environmental reasons.
Announcing the adoption of the regulation, European Commission spokesman Olof Gill said it would come into force on Wednesday and apply retroactively from January 1 to the end of the year. This measure will allow farmers who grow nitrogen-fixing plants or catch crops, for which no plant protection product has been used, on 4% of their land, to use this area instead of leaving it fallow. The adoption of the measure comes as farmers across Europe have demonstrated against EU agricultural policies.
Farmers complain that the 27-nation European Union’s policies on the environment and other areas are a financial burden and make their products more expensive than imports from third countries.
Protests took place in Italy, Spain and Poland on Friday, while farmers descended on the heart of the European Union earlier this month, blocking the streets of Brussels with hundreds of tractors, while smoke black was escaping from the burning tires and the leaders of the 27 member nations of the Union were holding a summit.
Following the protest in Belgium, the European Commission announced plans to protect farmers from cheaper products from wartime Ukraine, as well as the measure on the use of fallow land.
The Greek government seeks solutions
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told protesting farmers that his government wantedfind solutions“to their long-standing problems, but that it had to take into account the country’s budgetary constraints.”I want to emphasize from the outset that we are here to find solutions and that we come to this meeting in a good mood, as we have shown throughout this period, and I believe that we can meet in a common place taking into account justified concerns, but also the fact that the country’s budgetary margins are specific and limited“, he said during a meeting in Athens with farmers’ representatives on Tuesday (February 13).
“Many sectors, many social groups always have demands and expectations from the government and every government decision must take social justice into account“, declared the Prime Minister during his introductory speech. In recent weeks, farmers have set up blockades on many roads and highways in Macedonia and Thessaly. They are demanding, in particular, tax relief on agricultural diesel, reduction electricity costs, subsidies for supplies and feed, renegotiation of the EU’s new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), full compensation for lost income and an end to labeling non-Greek products as Greek.
In Eastern Europe, Polish farmers are still blocking border crossings with Ukraine in the Podkarpackie province in southeastern Poland. They say they will stay there until their demands are met. For them, it is above all about the EU “Green Deal” and what they consider to be uncontrolled imports of Ukrainian agricultural products which reduce the value of their production.