The French member of the European Parliament said the peasant movement was at the forefront of the attack on the “degrowth” policies of far-left neoliberal elites, who have impoverished Europeans under the guise of environmental policies.
Ahead of this week’s European elections, Patricia Chagnon, a member of the European Parliament for France’s populist National Rally party, told Breitbart London in an interview that people are “waking up” to the realities of green policies, and that the farmers’ movement is leading the charge against technocrats in Brussels who are trying to impose environmental policies on the rest of Europe.
European farmer protests that began in the Netherlands in 2019, when tractors flooded highways and shut down infrastructure in opposition to an EU-led plan to close thousands of farms to meet dubious targets on biodiversity and nitrogen emissions, have now spread across the EU, with large-scale protests seen in other countries such as Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Poland in the past year alone.
This week, farmers again took to their tractors and swarmed Brussels, blocking border crossings between Spain and France, to remind people of their struggle ahead of EU elections, pledging to take to the streets again after the autumn harvest if their demands for rolling back environmental regulations and globalist free trade deals are not met, making their profession unviable.
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Farmers have already had some success, forcing Brussels in March to halt a “natural recovery” plan that would have likely led to the closure of thousands of farms. A pro-farmer party, the Farmers’ Citizens Movement, is also set to enter government in the Netherlands and is expected to win seats in the European Parliament.
“This is a deliberate degrowth policy, an ideological pincer. On the one hand, you have the far-left who want to live with a little candle and a furry thing around their waist eating bugs,” said Chagnon, who took part in a farmers’ tractor rally in Brussels on Tuesday.
“Meanwhile, the ultra-liberal global elites also want Europe to degrow, because they want to use Europeans as docile consumers and source everything they buy from the cheapest place in the world. They don’t care if the meat is from Argentina or New Zealand, the milk is from India. They don’t care at all. They just want to make the biggest profits.”
‘Stop Green Communism’: Farmers protesters block French borders, storm Brussels ahead of EU electionshttps://t.co/MLWub6IeBn
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 5, 2024
But campaigning ahead of EU-wide elections this week, a French member of the European Parliament said people were beginning to wake up to the negative effects of environmental policies, which she argued have only enriched Communist China by moving industry there and led to higher prices in Europe, even though the EU is responsible for only about 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions.
“The reason the farmers’ movement has been so successful is because their problems epitomize the problems suffered by all ordinary citizens. Farmers say energy prices are too high, but we all know that here in Europe we all pay high electricity bills.
“Farmers say gas prices are too high, and everyone sees it when they go to the gas station to fill up their car. Farmers say they’re overwhelmed with stupid regulations, and hunters know it, bus drivers know it, and everyone knows the proliferation of regulations and little papers that have to be stamped and approved,” Chagnon explained.
The MEP said he believes one of the biggest advantages of the farmers’ protests is that no one views them as “lazy” people who depend on the state for their livelihood, as is the case with other protesting groups in society.
French farmers criticize Macron: ‘You gave Ukraine so much aid, but gave us so little!’https://t.co/52kmLNmZLw
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 24, 2024
“You can’t say that farmers live on social security because everyone knows that they work hard. No one in France would say, ‘farmers are lazy.’ So whether you’re in France, Holland, Germany, Belgium or Spain, there’s a general feeling of sympathy for farmers.”
She also argued that because the farmers’ protests were overwhelmingly peaceful, their message got across without being demonized by the media. While the Yellow Vest movement was thwarted by President Macron and infiltrated by Black Bloc agitators, Chagnon said the farmers were “very careful” to avoid violence, which allowed the media to actually discuss their issues and not focus on sensationalism.
Critically, the populist politician suggested that farmers have similar problems to Europeans, and that while each country has its own domestic issues, there are also common EU problems that stem directly from the technocrats in Brussels who have been running the EU for decades.
“They showed us that there are common problems that unite Europeans, suggesting that if we are not alone, then perhaps we can do something, because there are many of us and together we may be stronger.”
French peasant revolt: 9 in 10 support farmers’ protests against globalist government https://t.co/cINXr0IjEx
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 25, 2024
