Understand why farmer protests erupted across Europe

Farmers are staging protests across Europe, clogging the streets with their tractors, blocking ports and throwing eggs at the European Parliament over a long list of complaints ranging from environmental regulations to excessive bureaucracy.

“We no longer earn a living from our profession,” a farmer in Paris told CNN .

While some of the most dramatic protests have taken place in France, similar actions have taken place in a number of countries, including Italy, Spain, Romania, Poland, Greece, Germany, Portugal and the Netherlands.

Agriculture accounts for just 1.4% of the European Union's GDP, the latest figures show, but protests in eastern Europe last year against cheap imports from Ukraine – which prompted long border blockades – show how farmers, as a group, , are capable of causing major problems.

Both national governments and the EU are now under pressure to crack down on new demonstrations.

A CNN takes a closer look at the factors involved.

What is happening and where?

This week, farmers' protests struck at the heart of the European Union as they reached Brussels on Thursday as leaders held a key summit on Ukraine.

Once camped in front of the parliament building, they threw eggs, blew horns and started fires.

Belgian farmers targeted the borders with the Netherlands at Zandvliet, Meer and Postel, causing delays.

In France, farmers blocked main highways leading to Paris, as well as the cities of Lyon and Toulouse. Dozens of farmers set up tents and lit fires to stay warm as they tried to block routes to the French capital.

At least 91 people were detained on Wednesday for obstructing traffic and causing damage near the Rungis market south of Paris, a major food distribution center, reported BFMTV, an affiliate of CNN . But other protesters were less hostile: some farmers handed out fresh pain-au-chocolats to police on the outskirts of Paris.

A farmer, Hugo Auge, told CNN that the current system “makes a mockery of both farmers and consumers”.

Also this week, bulldozers in Greece marched towards the second-largest city of Thessaloniki on Thursday, aiming to block key routes within the city.

Images from Portugal showed long lines of trucks parked near the Spanish border.

Last month, cities in Germany were paralyzed by thousands of protesting farmers braving freezing temperatures, heaping misery on Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition government.

Major roadblocks spanned cities from east to west, including Hamburg, Cologne, Bremen, Nuremberg and Munich – with up to 2,000 tractors registered at each protest.

The protests echo those of last year, when farmers in Eastern European countries including Poland, Romania and Bulgaria demonstrated against the impact of cheap Ukrainian grain imports, which were cutting domestic prices and affecting sales of local producers. .

What are the complaints?

While anger over economic, regulatory and green policies unites many of the protests, there are also country-specific grievances.

Farmers across the bloc say energy, fertilizer and transportation costs have risen, especially after Russia's war in Ukraine.

Additionally, governments have tried to reduce rising food prices amid inflation.

Eurostat data shows that the prices farmers get for their agricultural products peaked in 2022, but have been declining since then – falling almost 9% on average between the third quarter of 2022 and the same period in 2023.

In France, a government plan to phase out a tax break for farmers on diesel as part of a broader energy transition policy has also sparked outrage.

Cheap foreign imports have fueled discontent, with farmers arguing that such products constitute unfair competition.

Emmanuel Mathé, a French farmer from the small village of Noisy-Rudignon in Seine et Marne, told CNN : “We are subject to enormous restrictions and there are products that arrive from outside Europe, which compete with us without applying the same rules that we are obliged to produce”.

Farmers, especially in Eastern Europe, continue to voice complaints about Ukraine's cheap agricultural imports, including cereals, sugar and meat. The EU waived quotas and duties on Ukrainian imports in light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Climate change is worsening the situation in different ways. Extreme weather events, such as forest fires and droughts, are increasingly affecting production.

Anger has also been directed at Brussels over the EU's environmental targets. Renaud Foucart, senior lecturer in economics at Lancaster University in England, points to the European Green Deal as an important source of tension.

The agreement aims to introduce measures including a carbon tax, pesticide bans, restrictions on nitrogen emissions and restrictions on water and land use.

Foucart says farmers are trying to delay Green Deal regulations for as long as possible. “So they want to further delay any attempt to tax carbon, any attempt to reduce pesticides.”

He highlights that each European country has its specific concerns.

“In Germany, the focus was on diesel, starting to tax diesel for tractors. In the Netherlands, the specific issue was about nitrogen taxation, which affects industrial pig and chicken production. Poland is a very interesting case because it has been at the forefront of military support for Ukraine, but at the same time Polish farmers are very angry and block the border to ensure that Ukrainian grain does not reach Poland.”

What is being done to calm the protests?

At EU level, farmers got a commitment from Brussels on January 31, when it announced a delay in rules that would force them to set aside land to promote soil health and biodiversity.

The European Commission has offered an exemption to EU farmers from the obligation to keep a minimum part of their land fallow, while allowing them to maintain the associated support payments.

The Commission also said it would extend the suspension of import duties on Ukrainian exports for another year, until June 2025.

At a government level, Berlin partially backed off its plans to cut diesel subsidies last month.

Watering down its original plan, the government said the tax exemption for agricultural vehicles would be maintained and cuts to tax incentives for diesel would be staggered over three years. Many farmers, however, are calling for a complete reversal.

Greece announced it would extend the special tax break on agricultural diesel for a year, in response to calls from farmers who lost their crops and livestock in floods.

This week, France announced a series of measures for farmers. Newly appointed French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal pledged to safeguard “food sovereignty” and said France would increase controls on food imports “that do not respect our rules at European and French level”, in an effort to protect farmers from unfair competition.

Attal also announced the allocation of 150 million euros to livestock farmers “in fiscal and social support, starting this year and continuing permanently”.

There are signs that the French measures are working – some blockades were lifted after two major unions called for an end to roadblocks. But elsewhere protests continue.

What lays ahead?

While governments have made concessions, some farmers say they are not enough and are calling for continued action.

The protests also fueled backlash against the European Union ahead of European Parliament elections in June.

European Commission President Ursula von Der Leyen has defended the EU's target of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

However, he faces pressure from his own center-right party to dilute green legislation.

European far-right parties hope to make gains in elections and may capitalize on farmers' grievances for political gains of their own.

This has already been seen in Germany, when the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) got involved in the protests and expressed solidarity with farmers.

And there is precedent for farmers to do more than just take to the streets. In March last year, a Dutch populist party rode a wave of rural anger to win key elections. The Farmer-Citizen Movement or BoerburgerBeweging (BBB) ​​emerged from mass demonstrations against the government's environmental policies. It is now the largest party in the Dutch Senate.