Polish farmers launch blockade on Germany border

WARSAW: Polish farmers blocked two major border crossings with Germany on Monday in a protest against farm imports from outside the European Union and the bloc’s environmental red tape.

MADRID; Farmers hold banners reading "We are not hooligans, we are farmers", "The agriculture sector is dying" during a protest organized by "Union de Uniones" union, in central Madrid, on March 17. -- AFP.

Farmers have been blocking checkpoints with Ukraine, complaining that imports from the neighboring war-torn country undercut their profits, and now expanded the protest to the country’s western border.

The two blockades at the Swiecko and Gubinek crossings “will continue until Wednesday evening”, a spokesman for the local police, Marcin Maludy, told AFP.

The farmers have parked their tractors on the A2 highway, blocking traffic in both directions. Polish farmers last month briefly blocked the border with Germany in Slubice, with the passage currently open but congested as drivers divert from the clogged routes.

The EU has come forward with propositions to revamp the bloc’s subsidy program, known as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), in a bid to assuage the farmers across the continent.

The proposed changes to the CAP still need to be negotiated between EU member states and the European Parliament. One would exempt small farms under 10 hectares (25 acres) from checks and penalties tied to CAP conditions.

Another would free farmers of the obligation to keep part of their land fallow, though they would still be incentivized to do so. Poland’s agriculture minister announced new talks with the disgruntled farmers for Tuesday. 

Hundreds of farmers paraded through the Spanish capital on foot and by tractor on Sunday in the latest protest over the crisis facing the agricultural sector. The farmers marched from the Ministry of Ecological Transition to the Ministry of Agriculture after the European Union proposed legislative changes to drastically ease the environmental rules of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Friday.

Rallied by their trade union, farmers carried banners proclaiming “We are not delinquents” to the sound of horns and whistles. One decorated his tractor with a mock guillotine. “It is as if they want to cut off our necks,” said Marcos Baldominos explaining his guillotine. “We are being suffocated by European rules,” the farmer from Pozo de Guadalajara, 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Madrid, added.

Friday’s concessions in Brussels aimed to loosen compliance with some environment rules, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said. While the move was welcomed by Spain’s left-wing government, some environmental NGOs criticized the measures. “We are faced with a pile of bureaucratic rules that make us feel more like we are at an office than on a farm,” the trade union behind Sunday’s march, Union de Uniones, said with reference to requirements “that many small and medium-sized farms” cannot “cope with”. Sunday marked the fourth demonstration in Madrid since the start of the wider European farm protest movement in mid-January. – AFP.