Winning! EU Drops Net Zero Demands After Farmers’ Protests
The European Union has backed down on Net Zero targets for agriculture, including drastic cuts in fertiliser and pesticide use and a recommendation that people eat less meat, following widespread protests from farmers. The Telegraph has more.
The European Union has caved in to angry protests from farmers and cut a target to slash agricultural emissions as part of the bloc’s net zero drive.
A demand to reduce nitrogen, methane and other emissions linked to farming by almost a third has been removed from a wider Brussels plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2040.
On Tuesday, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, also proposed withdrawing the EU’s plan to halve the use of pesticides, calling it a “symbol of polarisation”.
“Our farmers deserve to be listened to,” she told the European Parliament.
“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.”
A recommendation urging EU citizens to eat less meat was also removed from the plan.
The concessions came amid mounting demonstrations by farmers in Belgium, France, Germany and Italy ahead of this year’s EU elections.
Blockades on supermarket distribution centres have left shelves empty in Brussels, while several people have been injured in traffic accidents caused by farmers’ protests in the Netherlands, as they dumped rubbish and set fires on highways.
Worth reading in full.
The Telegraph‘s James Crisp says farmers are “holding the EU hostage and winning”. The EU climbdown on Net Zero rules “will not stuff the Eurosceptic genie back into the bottle”.
Polls predict anti-EU parties will win June’s European Parliament elections in nine member states – Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Slovakia.
Now fully emerged from their defensive crouch after Britain’s painful Brexit negotiations, they are set to come second or third in another nine EU countries.
The EU fears that those results could be boosted by the farmers’ populist revolt.
Tractor protests against climate rules handed a Dutch farmer’s party a landslide victory in regional elections last year after the vote became a referendum on establishment politics.
After the ruling coalition collapsed, voters turned to Geert Wilders, an anti-migrant, Nexit-backing, farmer-supporting firebrand in November’s snap General Election.
Copycat tractor protests have since been held in France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Poland, and Romania, are expected soon in Slovakia and erupted in Spain on Tuesday.
Eurosceptic parties have adopted the farmer’s fight, robbing pro-EU forces of a constituency it has long regarded as its own thanks to the bloc’s huge agricultural subsidies.
A key battleground in the looming campaign is the pushback against the EU’s 2050 Net Zero target, a culture war given impetus by the cost of living crisis.
Also worth reading in full.
“One by one they crumble,” says Ross Clark, “the Net Zero targets that were dreamed up without any regard to their cost and practicality.” The latest to go in the U.K. is the ‘boiler tax’, hot on the heels of the delay on the ban on petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035. “Over the next few years we are going to see many more of these targets having to be relaxed, delayed or abandoned – including, I don’t doubt at some stage, the holy grail of Net Zero itself. It is just that it is going to be a long and painful political journey to get there.”
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“Our farmers deserve to be listened to,” she told the European Parliament
I’m amazed that fond a lying woman doesn’t get struck by lightning!
Just so many empty words from this evil woman at the EU. Keep up the protesting or net zero will finish us all.
Proposed withdrawing the EU’s plan does not mean much. And dear Ursula did not want to listen to the farmers when they were outside the EU headquarters in Brussels – instead she called in the riot police. And she signed off giving Ukraine 50 billion euros at the same time.
And the farmers still need to move to a more sustainable model of production so that their farms remain profitable in the years to come. Nothing much changing at all, really. But she is possibly wary of the upcoming elections, so she is putting on a good face for the interim.
“Our farmers deserve to be listened to,” she told the European Parliament.”
The words from the mouth of ‘fond of lying.’
Why should we expect the EU bureaucracy, a subdivision of the WEF to listen to “our farmers?” They have NEVER paid attention to their MP’s let alone their constituents.
The EU will regroup and await new orders from the Davos Deviants and to think otherwise is bloody stupidity of the highest order.
The farmers have won the initial skirmish but this is going to be a long war. The Davos Deviants will lay off for three or four weeks and then open another front.
Don’t be deceived!
The EU Politburo never withdraws, just delays to await a more opportune time, possibly to sneak it through while people are distracted with something else.
As Jordon Peterson put it….they keep pushing forward, when you push back, they move back a step, but ultimately, they have pushed forward a few paces at a time.
Need to push them so hard they fall over. Communist bstards, all of them.
The protesting farmers should stay in place until the legislation is enacted, the lying barstewards can’t be trusted one bit!
Hear, hear.
If only small c conservatives in the UK were one quarter as activist as the farmers in Europe we may not now be living in a uniparty state taking its orders from unelected globalist bodies.
While a win, it remains to be seen how definitive it is. Much like how the EU is a continuation of Hitler’s plans for Europe except they realised war and violence is not the answer, so to in this case they might find another way to sneak these in. The battle is not over until all these people are behind bars and their ideology is made illegal.
It will only be a setback to them, but this time they may lose a lot of their power base in the upcoming elections, so this is a good time to win! But never forget, the EU commission is never subjected to something as crass as an election, and that is where the EU power base really resides. The farmers may win this battle, but the war goes on, the EU never willingly back down!
Hitler’s plans for Europe certainly never involved France making the decisions and a seriouly crippled Germany paying the bills for all of that.
No but it is still a new Reich. Without the goose steps and the Blitzkreig
No, it is not. It’s the traditional French hegemony in new clothes which has existed – in one way or another – since before the 30 years war. Presumably, since the kings in Paris managed to get of the English Normans and thus, set their targets on conquering other people’s territories. One of the reasons why the establishment parties in Germany would like to ban the AfD is because it was originally founded as anti-Euro party with the goal to stop Germany basically paying for the whole EU while getting exactly nothing in return for that.
People old enough for this (like me) also remember (or ought to remember) that the condition that Germany must get rid of its own currency was imposed on the German state by the so-called allied powers – Maggie Fetzer¹ playing prominent role here – for allowing the so-called German unification to happen. This went along with the other condition that Germany musn’t have armed forces which are large enough to inconvenience the well-known global hyperpower called Greece.
¹ She who violently tears apart stuff, German pronounciation harmonizes with the English pronounciation of Thatcher.
To misquote ‘Chuck’ Heston’s Second Amendment speech, “They’d have to prise my steak knife and fork from my cold dead hands.”
Your proposal is acceptable.
(Men in Black)
I believe that’s where Charlton Heston lifted it from. The Alien in MiB pre the slaying of the issuer of the proposal.
With all due respect, victory isn’t getting the EU to “back down” on insane Net Zero policies.
The only thing that consistitutes am actual victory is dismantling the oppressive bureaucracy that if left in place will sooner or later kick back into gear and reintroduce the policies in some other form under the cover of some other legislation,. They’ll find a deceitful name for it like “the farming prosperity law” to fool unrhinking, unsuspecting dolts (i. e. elected politicians).
Yo————-Try reading “While Europe Slept” by Bruce Bawer. —–I think you will find it a great read Stewart.
I will.
It focusses mostly on the multicultural dangers, especially Islam. There are plenty of other fantastic ones on the so called “Environment”…….”Hubris” by Michael Hart is fantastic. It is a large book but a fantastic one about the “Troubling science economics and politics of climate change”
Maybe she’ll get the message to the EU: Reform or die.
This shows that we cannot be just sitting about on our couch and bleating “What can we do about it”? ——–If we keep sitting on our arses watching the telly these eco communists will bludgeon us out of existence. There will be no central hating, no holidays abroad, no cars in the drive, no ability to move freely about towns and cities. They are grabbing us by the balls and we sit and take it. ——-Congratulations to these people that got off their couch and made the eco parasites back up
The aim of all the EU crap is to cripple European agriculture with the sole intention of causing mass starvation and of course massive population die-offs, aided and abetted shortly by Billy’s Disease X.
In the short term it would appear that European farmers have put a stop to this but I very much doubt the WEFfers will be put off in the slightest. So what next?
Perhaps a swine ‘flu epidemic and or an agricultural disease affecting arable crops. Bliar could be brought in to oversee the slaughter of millions of farm animals and it’s not as if he hasn’t got “experience” in such a mucky task.
Something will hit farms and farming communities before the year is out of that I’m sure.
This climb down must be incredibly painful for the EU. It will not have been done lightly. They have done it because they can see the whole pack of cards collapsing with anti-EU sentiment in just about every member state, and they don’t want to jeopardise their main objective which is mass immigration. Net zero lunacy can be reversed in time, demographic change cannot.
Why aren’t are own farmers protesting? Net Zero by 2050 means, according to that Cambridge FIRES report, that all cattle and sheep farming must have ceased by 2050. So that’s OK by them is it?
Not that many farmers have read it.
Another prospective ‘small win’ is that our local MP in Wrexham has written in a free sheet that the candidates set to replace drippy Mark Drakeford would support a review of the 20mph speed limit. She said “this default speed limit is criminalising hardworking residents of Wrexham and slowing down our Emergency Services.”
And yet nobody voted for them. From what I read they surveyed companies about the 20mph in Wales.
I am suspicious of the EU. I suspect they’ll be planning measures to try to prevent these types of protests in the future. You watch. These people are left over communists who went quiet when Soviet communism collapsed in the 90s. They are a hard virus to eradicate.
We should have put communism on trial, publicly, after 1990, so that it’s crimes could have been openly discussed and ridiculed, and a record made. But that did not happen, so stupid and ignorant youngsters still think that communism have never been properly enacted. The danger is still there in Britain thanks to the Labour communist party.
Yup…Citizen Smith types come to mind.
Might have been an idea if the Kommissars in the EU had consulted the farmers ….. and the rest of the population ….. BEFORE imposing the draconian Net Zero targets ….. and then doing what they wanted.
We could call it something …… erm…… consultocracy? erm ….. peopocracy? erm …. I know …… how about Democracy?
It could work on the basis of “One Person, One Vote.” And the policies which get the most votes are chosen.
No doubt farmers will be watching their backsides now !
power to the people