Dozens of farmers demonstrated again this Monday near the European neighborhood in Brussels. Approximately 1,500 tractors have collapsed near community institutions since early morning, in protest of the crisis situation in the sector and on the occasion of the meeting of Agriculture Ministers being held today in the Belgian capital.
Ministers are expected today to address the measures recently proposed by the European Commission to relax the environmental requirements that farmers must meet to access funds belonging to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Likewise, the reduction of all the bureaucratic burden faced by the agricultural and livestock sector will be analyzed, a proposal that countries like Spain value positively.
Farmers regret the excess burdens and measures they have had to take since the new CAP was adopted just two years ago, such as the new environmental standards. A principle of conditionality that is not supported by the sector. Given the situation, the Executive has proposed that these requirements be simplified. In addition, other exemptions have already been applied, such as eliminating the condition of keeping 4% of arable land fallow in 2024.
To have their demands heard, farmers have approached the European institutions, close to the Council of the EU, where the ministers are; also in the offices of the Directorate General of Agriculture of the European Commission, where they have erected barricades with tires, which has caused a smoke that could be seen along one of the main arteries that connects the center and the European quarter. Several hundred police and riot police guard the streets, with water cannons to put out the different bonfires that had been lit in different places.
For his part, the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, has insisted on the importance of this meeting offering solutions, because “farmers and ranchers expect an effective European response.” Likewise, he has urged the European Commission to take short-term legislative measures, before the end of the legislature on the elements of conditionality, to “accelerate” the response required by the sector. “All these adaptation measures do not call into question environmental requirements, but we are sensitive to the concerns of livestock farmers,” he added.
Finally, Planas has advanced that if the proposal put forward by the Commission to reduce “by up to 50% the number of controls carried out by national inspectors on agricultural holdings” on farms of less than 10 hectares is approved, it would mean “in “In the case of Spain, 345,000 declarants would benefit.”
