Agriculturalists from Belgium, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia joined forces to demonstrate against potential cuts to the bloc’s multi-billion euro Common Agricultural Policy. They fear the bloc is about to tighten its purse strings when it comes to billions in annual handouts to farmers across the Continent. Amid fears for their struggling industry, demonstrators called for increased agriculture spending as EU leaders sat down to hammer out details of the seven-year budget in Brussels.
The Federation Wallonne de L’Agriculture, which represents Belgium’s French-speaking farmers, accused Brussels of ignoring thousands of family-run businesses by tying them up in swathes of red tape.
A spokeswoman said: “We have very big economic problems in our family-run farms. What we are afraid of is they may eventually disappear in the future.
“It’s very hard for them to generate incomes because they have to face products coming from outside Europe with lower standards – it’s less expensive to produce and less expensive to buy – so there are many problems for European farmers because they have to reach this very high quality asked by Europe but can’t sell for the right price for the quality of their work.”
She added Brussels needs to maintain its “high” CAP budget to “compensate” farmers for the lost profits.
Latvia’s prime minister joined the demonstration before sitting down to meet his fellow EU leaders.
Supporting Baltic farmers, Arturs Krisjanis Karins called for a “level playing field” and for Brussels to stop “punishing” agriculturalists based on their location.
He told Express.co.uk: “The argument is quite simple, if we are going to subsidise farming, we should do it fairly.
“Everyone competes in the same market, everyone has similar costs – why punish or benefit some farmers as to others? They should all be on a level playing field, this is what we argue for all sectors of the single market… let’s apply it to farming as well.”
He added: “We have to remember we are in a single market, everyone sells their produce – they into the same market.
“They are commodities so the price is pretty much the same everywhere in Europe. The difference is in the support farmers get.
“Right now, farmers in the three Baltic states receive the least support of all but their costs are not any less.”
The protests, metres away from EU prime ministers in the Belgian capital, have been replicated across the Continent, with Spanish farmers also voicing fury over growing levels of bureaucracy.
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“That is not fair, this is not reciprocity, these are not equal conditions for the same market.”
Under plans presented by the European Council, spending on the Common Agricultural Policy could be cut by at least 14 percent.
The bloc is currently wrangling over a £68billion blackhole in its budget after Brexit.
In 2018, eurocrats spent 37 percent of the bloc’s £135billion annual budget on agricultural projects.
The Common Agricultural Policy oversees billions of euros in subsidies to farmers across the EU to help them remain profitable.
France is the main beneficiary of the policy, receiving around £7.5billion a year in cash handouts from Brussels.