Europe is revolting… but not for the reason you might think

There is something uniquely seductive about a town-vs-country clash. In an age where urban and rural folk largely lead separate lives, the sight of farm vehicles and livestock intruding into usually ordered city streets has a jarring appeal.

The latest such stand-off was in Brussels, where upwards of 1,200 tractors today converged on the European parliament. The protest was directed at European leaders taking part in a special EU summit meeting not far away, and the ensuing contretemps followed a familiar script. The farmers lit bonfires, attacked statues, deposited manure and threw projectiles of various kinds at the police. The police, in full riot gear, laid about them with truncheons before resorting to hoses and water cannon.

It was one of the bigger, and angrier, shows of strength by European farmers in recent months but it was no isolated protest. Even as the mostly Belgian farmers descended on the capital’s Place du Luxembourg, their French counterparts were besieging Paris, threatening to “starve” the city into submission. Since last summer, there have been farmers’ protests in Spain, Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania and Poland.

These manifestations of rural anger have combined with polls indicating growing support for what are loosely termed populist parties and politicians, and two sets of parliamentary elections late last year – in Slovakia and the Netherlands – where populist politicians came out on top, to suggest mounting political dissatisfaction in countries across Europe. Then, in just the past fortnight, many Germans were shocked to learn that a section of the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party had met to discuss, among other things, the possibility of repatriating people described as unassimilated migrants.

Now, there is no suggestion that this would have any chance of being adopted as policy, even by AfD, and it has been roundly condemned by mainstream German politicians of every complexion, as well as drawing widespread street protests. But all of these strands – from the number of farmers’ very visible protests to the secret conclave of AfD – support a view that Europe is entering a new period of revolution, perhaps one akin to 1848; and/or that the trend towards ever-closer European cooperation that gave birth to the EU may be reaching its end.

This is not, I have to say, how I would join the dots. I am not even convinced there are so many dots to join.

There is, though, an overall context that may be at least as relevant as any of the other developments, and probably more so. This year, there will be elections in Portugal, Belgium and Austria, which could well produce change; and, across the EU in June, European parliament elections. The governments in France and Germany are showing signs of weakness and strain: President Macron has just made changes at the very top of his government, and the stability of the German coalition may be in question.

Whether local, national or EU-wide, elections – or disunited governments – offer all manner of opportunities for lobbying, rallying and outright brinkmanship, and this is surely at least part of what we are seeing with the bonfires in front of the European parliament.

What is more, farmers may be the EU’s single most powerful lobby. They have two common concerns at present. One – the main focus of the Brussels and Paris protests – is what they see as ever more intrusive EU red tape, at least some of which reflects the EU’s environmental agenda. As such, their complaints chime with a wider public concern in many countries about fuel prices and the cost to consumers of “green” policies imposed – again, as some see it – without a sufficient popular mandate.

The other concern can be summed up in a word: Ukraine. One form of EU assistance to Ukraine has taken the form of imports of grain and other agricultural products that can no longer be exported to Russia or other countries by sea. Many EU farmers, however, regard this as unwelcome, unfair competition. It became an election issue in both Slovakia and Poland last year, and remains contentious, on top of the ongoing cost of helping Ukraine.

In some respects, this is a warning of the difficulties that Ukraine’s proposed accession to the EU is likely to present, when and if it happens. It is a big country, a poor country, and a major agricultural producer. In time, this could become a serious point of contention within the EU.

It does not seem to me that the farmers’ complaints, as currently expressed, are more damaging to the EU than such protests have been in the past, or that they are insoluble. Some slowing of the green agenda may well be granted, along with compensation for imports from Ukraine. Kyiv’s actual accession is another matter – but if the EU can convince Hungary to supply more financial help for Ukraine, as it did at this week’s Brussels summit,  the matter of Ukrainian grain and the impact of the EU’s green agenda on farmers can surely be solved, too.

Other issues are more of a national, than EU-wide, nature. The – rare – German farmers’ protests in recent weeks were sparked by a government move that would have raised diesel prices. While German farmers may share many of their EU colleagues’ concerns, the origins of this dispute were national. This is where the solution will lie.

As for EU-wide discontent that could erupt into popular uprisings – if only in the form of electing far-right or populist parties – again, the dangers seem exaggerated. While this was indeed what happened in the Netherlands and Slovakia, the opposite happened in Poland, where Donald Tusk’s pro-EU Civic Platform topped the recent poll. It has also to be said that Slovakia now has a left-right coalition government, and the Netherlands has, as yet, no new government at all.

In Germany, the AfD vote does not always match the fears it generates – it unexpectedly lost a mayoral election last weekend – and the same is true of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (formerly the National Front) in France. A distinction has also to be drawn between domestic elections and EU elections which can offer what appears to some voters a more risk-free outlet for discontent.

All that said, the European Union has shown an admirable and, to many, surprising solidarity with Ukraine over the two years since the Russian invasion. There have been differences over military support, as well as over grain imports, but – despite Hungary’s regular stance as an outlier – no serious division has opened up for Russia, or anyone else, to exploit. Germany could be said to have sacrificed much of its economic pre-eminence in support of Ukraine, reorientating its entire economy away from Russian energy; most countries have suffered the pain of higher prices. But the EU – perhaps in part because of the UK’s departure? – has weathered the strains.

The national and EU-wide elections in the coming months will show how far this cohesion can and will be sustained. But I find it hard to discern in the farmers’ protests of today anything qualitatively different from those of the past, or, in any uptick in support for nationalist or populist movements, any potentially all-European dimension. At least as yet. There are many common causes for Europeans’ discontent, but also many national and other distinctions, which is why they seem unlikely, if ever, to coalesce.