Farmers’ anger: Spanish unions announce they will join the European movement

They rally around their colleagues from neighboring countries. Spain’s three main agricultural unions announced on Tuesday they were joining the angry movement of European farmers, holding a series of “mobilizations” across the country over the “coming weeks.”

“The agricultural sector in Europe and Spain faces growing frustration and anxiety,” in particular due to “the stifling bureaucracy generated by European regulations,” Asay, UPA and Coag explained in a joint press release. The three organizations, which at this stage do not specify the exact dates of the demonstrations, say they want a “relaxation” and “simplification” of the common agricultural policy, as well as an “ambitious action plan” at the “level” of the “EU, Spain” and Spanish “regions”. .

European farmers are “fighting against a deregulated market that imports agricultural products from third countries at low prices, which reduces” the prices of food produced “in the EU” and “in Spain,” emphasize three organizations, most of them Spanish. farmers. “These products, produced outside the community, do not comply with European regulations” in terms of respect for the environment and are the cause of “unfair competition” that “threatens the viability of thousands of agricultural enterprises in Spain and in Europe,” the press adds. release.

Use of phytosanitary products

Agricultural demonstrations have been intensifying for days across the European Union and mainly in France, where farmers have been blocking eight highways around the capital since Monday under the watch of massively mobilized police forces. Faced with such mobilization, Asaj’s union on Monday assured that it wants to join the movement. “Spanish farmers have the same problems as French farmers,” stressed President Pedro Barato, assuring that the “Spanish countryside” is “tired of being ignored.”

But the French farmers’ movement, marked by truck blockades on the Franco-Spanish border and criticism in France of Spanish agriculture accused of using large quantities of phytosanitary products, has sparked criticism among trade unions. The accusations are “false and unworthy,” said Coag, who demanded in a press release the free movement of trucks carrying Spanish goods in France.

“Production and marketing standards are the same in all member states,” said Spanish Agriculture Minister Luis Planas. Therefore, Spanish products are exported because of their “quality and competitiveness” and not “for any other reason,” he insisted.

Europe’s leading exporter of fruit and vegetables and the world’s leading producer of olives, Spain, along with France, Italy, Germany and Poland, is one of the EU’s major agricultural powers. However, the country has been grappling with a historic drought for three years, which has led to falling harvests, especially grains, and has weakened a large number of agricultural operations.