Slovak farmers are prepared to join their European counterparts in the week-long protests that have rocked many countries in recent weeks, the Slovak Chamber of Agriculture and Food (SPPK) said, adding that the EU’s “green fanaticism” was to blame.
The SPPK believes that Brussels and its green policies are at the root of the plight of European farmers, it said at a briefing in front of Slovakia’s National Council on Thursday.
This also includes problems resulting from the poor management of the Slovak Agricultural Paying Agency (APA) and defining the national strategic plan for implementing the CAP, it added.
For example, for the first time in 19 years of EU membership, the agency failed to deliver direct payments on time, and a number of farmers are still waiting for their money. The main reasons for this are APA’s lack of preparedness, excessive national legislation and gold-plating.
Last week, the European Commission gave in to some of the farmers’ demands and proposed to renew the suspension of import duties and quotas on Ukrainian agricultural exports to the EU for another year. It also proposed to allow EU farmers to extend the exemption from CAP rules that require farms to set aside land as fallow until the end of 2024.
But Slovak farmers view such concessions as “pseudo accommodating”, with SPPK chairman Emil Macho calling it “the last straw for both the European and the Slovak farmers”.
“Farmers protesting, burning tyres, pouring manure on administrative centres in half of the EU countries – that is just a consequence of what is often caused by green fanaticism in the EU,” he added.
Macho says that Slovak farmers are thus ready to protest and will do so in coordination with farmers from their Visegrad country neighbours. He also warns that they will deploy “hundreds of tractors” onto the streets as farmers in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Romania, Poland, Greece, Portugal and the Netherlands have already done.
In addition to the 5-6% of arable land that lies fallow in the EU bloc, Macho points to the many farmers who no longer work in the fields but rather sit in offices trying to “fill in the EU’s often senseless administrative regulations”.
“On top of that, thousands of tonnes of crops, meat, and poultry are being shipped through ports and imported into Europe from the other side of the planet. That is why EU farmers are blocking the ports: they want to show that Europe can feed itself and still export,” the SPPK chairman also stressed.
(Natália Silenská, Marián Koreň | Euractiv.sk)
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