The farmer uprisings across the continent have forced the globalist European Union leadership in Brussels to back down from key elements to its green agenda to achieve “net zero” emissions — for now.
Following major wins last year in The Netherlands, tractor protests from farmers secured another significant victory against the globalist agenda on Tuesday, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen scrapping plans to require the agriculture sector to cut methane and nitrogen emissions by a third by 2040.
Brussels is also set to backtrack on plans to cut the use of pesticides in half during the same time frame, which farmers have argued puts them at a disadvantage to foreign agriculture imported into the bloc under free trade deals at cheaper costs due to their countries having less stringent environmental regulations as the EU.
Plans to encourage Europeans to eat less meat, a central theme of the Great Reset movement favoured by elites, have also been abandoned.
Commenting on the move, EU chief von der Leyen said per The Telegraph: “Our farmers deserve to be listened to.”
“I know that they are worried about the future of agriculture and their future as farmers. But they also know that agriculture needs to move to a more sustainable model of production so that their farms remain profitable in the years to come”, she told the European Parliament.
However, it is unclear if the concessions made by Brussels on Tuesday will suffice to quell the anger of the farmers, given that they still face over-regulation at both the national and EU levels as well as facing issues from cheap foreign produce, notably from Ukraine, which was granted tariff-free access to the EU market following the Russian invasion.
The farmer protests against the EU’s green agenda, which began in earnest four years ago in The Netherlands, have seen major cities such as Berlin, Brussels, Paris and Rome blockaded by thousands of tractors over the past month, causing supply chain issues and disruptions to urban life.
Yet, the farmers have a broad base of support, with a recent poll finding that nearly 90 per cent of French voters believe that their tractor protests are justified.
The support for the farmers has sparked panic among the neo-liberal factions in Brussels for fear of turning the upcoming European Union Parliament elections in June into a referendum on the failures of the green agenda.
In addition to hurting farmers, it has also been regarded as having left Europe vulnerable to external events, such as the war in Ukraine, driving up the cost of energy in Europe where domestic fossil fuel production has largely dried up in favour of so-called renewables like wind and solar, which have failed to deliver on promises of energy independence.
While the backtrack on Tuesday has been widely regarded as a victory for the farmers, some — perhaps sensing blood in the water — have called to keep the pressure up on the EU leadership.
Dutch pro-farmer political activist Eva Vlaardingerboek said: “This is good news because it shows that protesting works and putting pressure on our overlords works. However, just dropping the requirements for 2040 is not enough. The entire agenda has to go. The Green Deal and the NetZero scam has to go. We’ve won a battle, not the war.”