A bundle of European far-right parties are attempting to bring down key EU progressive policy platforms, such as the Green Deal. The grassroots groups and glossy parties are attempting to use the fury of farmers to win at the ballot box, but who will reign supreme?
In Valencia, the European far right aims to win over the farming industry’s support in the upcoming European elections in June.
Following a previous meeting held at the Brussels branch of Mathias Corvinus Collegium, or MCC – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s think tank – the Spanish platform 6-F joined a dozen European agricultural associations that have created a common front to advance the ideas they share with the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR).
“Anyone wearing the Agenda 2030 pin is the enemy of the countryside,” Lola Guzmán, spokesperson for Platform 6-F, said.
Farmers demand an end to the Green Deal, protection of the European internal market, and the end of free trade agreements with third countries such as Ukraine, Morocco, or the future with Mercosur, which they believe threaten their survival.
“All of this is the consequence of a situation that Orbán is denouncing,” a platform member said.
Although the 6-F platform is an independent movement, figures among its organisers appear to have close ties to the far-right, such as the nephew of Vox’s candidate in the recent no-confidence motion against Pedro Sánchez, Ramón Tamames.
However, the new pan-European agricultural platform will not ask for votes for a specific party.
“What we have done is put up banners and the logos of the parties that did very bad things for farmers and for Dutch citizens, and we put a red cross on them,” said Sieta van Keimpema of the Farmers Defense Force, Netherlands, referring to the “Kick Them Out” campaign, which contributed to Geert Wilders’ recent parliamentary election victory in the Netherlands.
“We didn’t tell people who to vote for, we just told voters which parties didn’t do anything good for our country. So we put a red cross on them and people understood,” Keimpema explained.
The fight for the rural vote
New candidacies vie for the rural vote against Spain’s Vox, but the main agricultural platforms have chosen not to directly contest the elections.
The major organisations seem to have learned from the experience of the Yellow Vests in France who presented direct candidacies for the European elections in 2019, yet did not gain representatives.
The SOS Rural platform, which encompasses more than 500 organisations from the primary sector, has chosen to try to influence political parties to include their demands in their electoral programs.
“We believe that with one deputy, two deputies, or three deputies, our capacity for influence is quite limited. We need to think big, we need to influence the major political groups in Europe, be it the EPP or the Socialist group, to try to shape policies in Europe and to try to have a comprehensive vision in Europe,” says Javier Poza, general secretary of SOS Rural.
Despite its similarities with Vox, SOS Rural seems to have distanced itself from the more conservative theses of the Spanish far-right party. But protests against EU agricultural policies benefit Vox, according to analysts, just as the Yellow Vests‘ vote in 2019 ended up mostly in the hands of France’s Rassemblement.
“These protests not only have leaders who view many of Vox’s statements favourably, or who are directly close to Vox, but they fall within that ideological space that favours Vox,” says Andrés Santana, professor of Political Science at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM).
“First, the ‘bad guys’ are those in Brussels who think about ‘progressive’ issues like the environment and are generating costs for farmers. And we are suffering these restrictions while importing agricultural products from outside; it’s a bit like the immigration issue, but in terms of trade.”
“All of these elements – such as anti-elitism, Euroscepticism, supposed progressive bias, immigration – fit very well with what Vox says in other areas. Therefore, the more important this issue, the better for the radical right, in Europe and in Spain,” Santana concluded.
