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Democracy is finished in Europe | Yanis Varoufakis

 

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BRICS+ MOSCOW MEETING RESULTS: UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt & Ethiopia Join To Discuss Strategy

 

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Europe has been rocked by growing protests by farmers over low prices, high production costs, green policies and cheap imports. What's behind the growing movement?
The farmers' protest movement has been increasingly engulfing Europe since January seeing massive demonstrations in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania and the Netherlands.
By January 31, the number of farmers protesting across France against the Macron government's agricultural policies had reached 10,000, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin admitted.
The current situation has reached boiling point thanks to a series of systemic problems in European agriculture sector, according to Josep-Maria Arauzo-Carod, professor of economics at the Rovira i Virgili University (URV), chair of the Research Center on Economics and Sustainability (ECO-SOS).
"The European agricultural sector has traditionally faced a lot of challenges, especially because, well, it is an industry which is very difficult to compete against production coming in from outside Europe because production costs are much higher here in Europe," Arauzo-Carod told Sputnik. "So obviously without any kind of public intervention local prices are going to be higher than imports. So then there is no room for, let's say, agricultural activity here in Europe. But it is also true that there is a huge amount of public intervention. In fact, agricultural common policy is the most important area in terms of the European budget."

"In addition to producing food, the sector also has many other contributions, like, for instance, contributions in terms of, territorial balance, in terms of keeping people living in the countryside. And all these, all these, let's say, collateral, activities also are needed. But what's happening right now, and for some years, is that there are a lot of environmental challenges and obviously we are all facing these environmental challenges in all economic activities," the expert continued.
Europe's economic slump, uncertainty over decoupling from Russia's copious energy market and attempts by some states to artificially suppress prices driven up by inflation have only made things worse for the continent's agricultural workers.
The influx of cheap food from Ukraine to Europe amid the ongoing conflict with Russia hit farmers hard, prompting Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary to slap import bans on Ukrainian agricultural goods.

"The effect is not exactly from the anti-Russian economic sanctions, but on the import from Ukraine," Arauzo-Carod said. "The structure of the Ukraine agricultural sector is very different from the one in the rest of Europe because in Ukraine, expectations are much higher, which means more efficient. In Europe they are smaller, and additionally the production costs in Ukraine are much lower. Obviously they are competing against European products. And agricultural producers have complained a lot."

 The expert argued that European authorities should have accommodated the international flows of goods with European production. He noted that the EU leadership lifted all tariffs and quotas on Ukrainian imports, further reducing their price to ease the transit of Ukrainian commodities via land routes into the bloc."You have one of the traditional problems with the agricultural sector, that this is an industry which is highly subsidized. And when you have plenty of subsidies, your competition capacity is lowered a lot. And this is a challenge for European producers to increase their competitiveness without the support from public authorities," he stressed.Under these circumstances, the "green agenda" pushed by the EU was last straw, the expert said. Arauzo-Carod pointed out that European farmers have had to bear the brunt of energy transition costs. Cuts to farmers' fuel subsidies under the climate agenda by European governments are one of the protesters' major grievances. "And then they are arriving to a point in which in some sectors and places it is very, very difficult to survive," the expert stressed. 

Farmers "feel that they have to pay the entire bill of climate change. And it is true that the agricultural sector contributes a lot to emissions, and that the agricultural sector has to make a great effort in order to change the situation. But this is something that has to be done by all economic activities. So I would prefer a more balanced distribution of this green bill among all industries," he concluded.

 

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240201/how-eus-ukraine-and-climate-change-adventurism-kill-blocs-farming-1116541935.html

 

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On Thursday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban relented to pressure from the EU and finally allowed €50 billion in military and financial aid to be transferred to Ukraine after blocking the funding for more than a month. The funds are ostensibly planned to fund Ukraine until 2027 and came as US aid remains stalled in Congress.
Before the latest aid package was approved by the EU, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg remarked at a Monday news conference in Washington, DC, that “weapons are – in fact – the way to peace [in Ukraine],” but that's not quite the case, an analyst told Sputnik.
Dr. David Oualaalou told Sputnik’s Critical Hour on Wednesday that Stoltenberg’s assertion “defies logic” and asserted that Ukraine is already “gone.”
Oualaalou argued that Europe was pushed into supporting Ukraine by the US, which is not “paying the price” of that support in the same way Europe is. He added that the economic situation in Europe, largely brought on by the consequences of their support of Ukraine and sanctions on Russia, makes the continent reliant on the US.
“[The US] created the conflict to ensure that Europe will stay under [its] thumb by dictating the terms and complicating matters for them,” Oualaalou explained. “One way you do that, [is] you complicate the economic outcome for an entity, doesn't matter who, that's how you do it.”

 

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240201/us-created-ukraine-conflict-to-keep-europe-under-its-thumb-1116544477.html

 

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BY Rachel Marsden

 

Von der Leyen celebrates ‘a great day for Europe’ as farmers trash Brussels

The unelected European Commission head made her priorities crystal clear by praising another cash dump on Ukraine

 

Agreement! The European Council delivered on our priorities. Supporting Ukraine…. A good day for Europe,” tweeted unelected European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday, as EU farmers “high-fived” her by throwing eggs, lighting fires and dumping manure in Brussels, where a reported 1,300 tractors had gathered in protest.

Surely it must have been in anticipation of this “great day for Europe” that Brussels rolled out the barbed wire to keep the bloc’s own struggling farmers at bay while its leaders cut yet another check for Ukraine — after threatening the one anticipated holdout with national economic “blackmail,” as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban qualified it. It’s hard to believe that this meeting actually took place in Brussels. These officials are so disconnected from reality that it may as well have been held on a whole other planet. 

Unlike the Ukrainian products making their way onto Western European dinner plates to stick it to Russian President Vladimir Putin (because turtlenecks and short, cold showers apparently failed to do the job), this crisis is certifiably EU-made. No one knows this better than the farmers, who also realize that it makes more sense to blockade the streets of Brussels than the national highways of their home countries, which they’ve been doing with overwhelming public support – from nine out of every ten citizens in the case of France, according to a recent Odoxa poll.

It was the EU with its climate change obsession that imposed a Common Agricultural Policy on farmers across the entire bloc, managed by bureaucrats divorced from the reality on the ground. Pencil pushers use EU Copernicus satellite images to spy and crack down on farmers whose paperwork doesn’t match – even if any discrepancies can be chalked up to uncontrollable but temporary conditions like the weather. 

It was also the EU that piled on regulations under the pretext of ensuring the quality of farm products, while at the same time flooding the bloc with grain, poultry, and other imports from Ukraine. Does “Chernobyl chicken” mass-produced by workers who are paid a pittance represent a threat to the physical health of citizens and economic health of farmers? If not, then why can’t Brussels take its jackboot off the necks of its own farmers so they can compete on a level playing field? The EU has also suddenly decided to ease up on some pesticide bans, angering greens. Paris is promoting the idea that ideologically-driven bans need to end, which seems like a tacit admission of their uselessness. So what should we be more worried about now – ideologically-driven authoritarianism under the guise of health consciousness, or an actual health threat?

And what about that Ukrainian grain that EU officials demanded Russia unblock to feed the poor in developing countries? It turns out that Turkey and Russia were right when they raised the alarm about it just being dumped right next door in Europe, and it sounds like Russian President Vladimir Putin was effectively a bigger defender of EU farmers’ interests than Brussels was. But who’s even surprised anymore by Brussels’ misplaced priorities, given the image that has now emerged of another €50 billion ($54 billion) going out the door to Kiev, in support of a country that’s undercutting the EU’s own farmers without even being in the EU itself?

It was also the EU that screwed itself, its entire population, industry, and farmers out of cheap Russian energy, driving inflation that caused consumers to turn to cheaper food products and, in turn, driving industrial distributors to buy more cheaply, favoring Ukrainian imports. French President Emmanuel Macron said that he’d now be merciless with those industrials, as he limbers up to toss them under the tractors instead of taking responsibility for his own inaction or blaming Brussels for a top-down anti-Russia policy that’s doing far more harm than good.

The farmers’ problems are existential. And while some French farming union chiefs have called for the suspension of blockades in light of the most recent series of promised reforms announced by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, it’s not clear whether the rank and file will actually listen in the long term. These are people who don’t talk much, but when they do, they’re direct and concrete. As one farmer told me, “Our feet may be in the dirt, but the dirt is clean” – in contrast to some politicians who have different narratives depending on their audience. Even with the suspension of the blockades on Friday, union reps admit that if government action and implementation doesn’t follow shortly, then the blowback from the same farmers risks being “catastrophic.” 

For many farmers I’ve spoken with, it’s far too little, and way too late. The average French farmer’s income, estimated by government statistics back in 2021 at around €17,700 a year (for people who regularly work 70 hours a week), has since been subjected to even more blows. Yet governments have insisted on milking this particular cow until there’s nothing left. How else to explain the careless decision to raise taxes on farm fuel by 3 cents a liter, every year, and the insistence on maintaining such a policy at a time when the price of energy had skyrocketed as a result of knee-jerk anti-Russian ideological choices imposed by the EU? Until the tractors spilled onto the highways in France, Paris showed no interest in reversing this tax policy, which was implemented to drive the “green transition” away from conventional energy, and against all pragmatic reality. Clearly French officials knew of its devastating impact, as it was one of the very first concessions that Attal tried tossing like a speed bump in front of the advancing tractors on January 26 – and which the farmers rolled right over, demanding more.

Then there’s Queen Ursula briefly breaking from her fawning over the EU farmers’ current nemesis, Ukraine, to propose easing their “administrative burden.” Too bad she didn’t do that before letting Ukraine into the market in the first place. Guess she could always just blame Putin for making her do it. The bureaucracy is so overwhelming at this point that her proposal to the farmers is like offering to save people drowning in the ocean by tossing them a bucket. She could have stopped the paperwork pile-on at any time, but didn’t. 

And how exactly could she know this demagoguery was killing European farming? You’d think that the first clue would have been the fact that EU policies ended up strong-arming Dutch farmers to sell their land to the government because their cattle’s nitrogen emissions exceeded climate policy limits. 

Macron has now started to lobby the EU to restrict Ukrainian imports. Wow. You’d think these tractors were Decepticon Transformers about to rise up and kick their behinds, the way that all these EU leaders are suddenly springing into action. But the fact that an elected president even has to go cap in hand to plead with unelected Brussels bureaucrats, rather than make sovereign decisions in the best interests of his own country, is pathetic. Like, what if they say no? Then what? Does Macron think that he’s going to single-handedly and permanently derail the new Mercosur free trade deal, ready for signature, and set to flood the EU with even more farm products from Brazil and the rest of South America?

If Macron, or any other EU leader had any courage, they would have vetoed the €50 billion for Ukraine and demanded that it be used in consultation with EU farmers to ease their burden and “unscrew” the bloc. That’s a lot of bought time for the EU to figure out how to deconstruct the mess that it has made of its own house through corruption and special interests – all in hope that one day, people doing honest work can also make a commensurately decent living.

https://www.rt.com/news/591720-leyen-brussels-ukraine-farmers-protest/

 

 

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LAND GRAB & FOOD SUPPLY CONTROL: Farmer Protests Erupt Across Europe Against Net Zero Agenda

 

 

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BERLIN, (Sputnik) - German farmers blocked the entrances and parking lot of the NDR broadcasting center in Hanover on Monday to protest the withdrawal of government subsidies, German tabloid Bild reported.
A considerable number of farmers and representatives of small and medium-sized businesses gathered in front of the NDR broadcasting center in Hanover in the morning, the newspaper reported. Over 30 tractors and 20 other types of vehicles blockaded the entrances and the parking lot.
The protesters are criticizing the insufficient coverage of agricultural sector workers' demonstrations and are demanding the cancellation of the budget passed by parliament last week, which includes cuts to fuel subsidies for farmers.

READ MORE: https://sputnikglobe.com/20240205/german-farmers-block-entrances-to-ndr-broadcasting-center-in-hanover-1116600843.html

 

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