State Of Agriculture 2024 Europe's Farmers And The Far Right
Part 2 of a 2 Part Series
ROB MILLS
PERRYVILLE, MISSOURI
The first time I heard the name LaPen was in the mid 1980’s. A woman I had become acquainted with at a church in St. Louis, spoke fluent French. She loved everything France and knew the political scene there very well. We talked.
During one conversation we had, the topic turned to a man named Jean Marie LaPen. He was the leader of the newly formed National Rally party in France. They were considered a far-right movement, who occasionally indicated their sympathy towards historic fascist leaders, notably French Marshall Phillipe Petain. They were anti socialist, anti-immigration and played on the anger the French public was feeling towards those they felt were ripping their culture away from them.
Anyway, many felt LaPen was just a nut job who would just go away in time. The vote totals his party picked up during elections never amounted to anything nationally. But his constituents in southeast France consistently elected him to the European Parliament over a fifteen-year period beginning in 2004.
Fast forward to early June 2024. Anger in Europe has grown and metastasized throughout the continent. Immigration, EU policies on climate change and unwanted involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war drove many disgruntled voters to the EU’s parliamentary elections, held the first week of the month. The result… 40 years after I was introduced to the name LaPen, it had come to the verge of seizing political power in France. Garnering twice the votes that President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party had received in the elections, the National Front had shaken European & French politics to the core. Next to immigration, the main driver propelling the shift to the right could be found in a Washington Post headline from April 2024…” Europe’s Farmers Are in Revolt…And the Far Right Is Trying to Make Hay.”
BACK WHERE WE STARTED
The formation of the European Union came out of the need for a continent brutalized by war to work together for the economic good of all. Nearly seventy years later, many felt the emergence of the far right in Europe was a growing rejection of that union, and the partnerships that nations who were mortal enemies in war were forced to make. Originally a vehicle for long term peace & prosperity, a profitable but uneasy alliance started to stress out.
By early 2024, what the wealthy Euro nations had been experiencing for decades, hadn’t been felt in the realm of agriculture. Over those decades, the anger being felt in nations like France over ag policy had been seized upon by nationalist, hard right leaders like the LaPen family. The National Rally party in France is not strictly an ag protest party. But its leaders banked on getting the farmers’ vote to take the movement to another level. And that’s exactly what happened.
From June 6th-9th of this year, Europe went to the polls to elect a new Parliament for the next five years. The results were clear. There had not been a revolution, but a clear move away from the center right governing coalition of the European People’s Party. The left had made no gains. LaPen’s daughter, Marnie, who is now in charge of the National Rally, and her allies in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland had made tremendous gains in the EU parliament. They could no longer be ignored. And the long-suffering European farmer believed he’d found his political voice.
But some farmers were not interested in the prevailing wind. To them, aligning with the right meant dealing with forces that wanted to essentially disband the structure that had made Europe rich. They also wanted nothing to do with the friendly rapport that LaPen and her continental allies have with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. But in France the political foundation had been shaken by the EU elections. The National Rally, leading with 30%, had doubled the 14.6% vote total that had been picked up by French President Emmanual Macron’s Renaissance Party. Macron in response, called for national elections in France for June 30th & July 7th. It was considered by many to be a panicked, reckless move to save his centrist government.
He began using heated rhetoric saying France could be on the verge of civil war if either the National Rally or the hard left coalition of Socialists, Communists, the Greens and France Unbowed, achieved a takeover of the French government. Somehow on their way to bring about fundamental change in EU ag policy, farmers in France had set in motion the potential for change that was far greater than anyone bargained for. But no one was complaining. They were sick of the status quo.
ITS EASIER TO BE IN THE FIELD?
In early 2024, current European Union President Ursula von der Leyen had to come to grips with what her predecessor of over 50 years ago, Sicco Mansholt had experienced with farmers protests. They have no use for the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. A share and share alike mandate when it originated, in farmers’ eyes it had become a vehicle for climate change activists, and the “Green Deal”. It consisted of mandates, bureaucracy and spending those farmers rejected.
The straw that broke the camel’s back occurred in the spring of 2023 when cheaper products from less regulated EU countries flooded European markets. Efforts to help Ukrainian farmers by waiving all import tariffs and other import costs to help the nation besieged by war, angered European farmers who saw their goods passed over in favor of cheaper Ukrainian products.
These actions and policies drew enraged farmers into Europe’s streets. The effect of the EU’s policies was to push Europe’s farmers into the arms of the continent’s far right political movements, who were desperately needing a jump start. The backlash of these policies saw the European parliament move right in historic numbers. At the end of the early June EU voting, 1/3 of the legislature’s seats were now controlled by LaPen’s alliance. The result… the far right had gone from laughingstock to a pivotal player at the European table of power. And their farming allies will sit right next to them in Brussels.
The next goal… France. And polls indicated the National Rally was on the verge of taking power, as the voting in the snap General Assembly elections began on June 30th. Things were looking good for the ag-right alliance.
ANGER AND SECOND THOUGHTS
President Emmanuel Macron of France, stunned by the rise of the National Rally in the EU elections, and humiliated by the performance of his centrist coalition, had made the decision that France would go to the polls in snap national elections to be held June 30th & July 7th for the nation’s General Assembly. His judgement was harshly criticized and considered by many observers both French and around the globe to be panicked. At first, it looked like his decision was going to be a political disaster for France’s forty-six-year-old President. However, the goal was to stop LaPen. It was worth the political risk.
The results of the first round of voting for a new General Assembly caused a second political earthquake in France in less than a month. The LaPen movement trounced the Left and Macron’s centrist party. In a historic rout, the far Right domestically doubled the vote received by the New Popular Front alliance of the Socialist & Green parties, and the Centrist coalition, With the next round of voting less than a week away, it looked as if the anger of farmers, augmented by anti-immigration sentiment, was about to give France a totally different mindset at the top of its government.
But in this case, the winds of change were confronted by a wave of second thoughts. In a week of campaigning and media blitz’s that made the current US political situation calm by comparison, the French voters put the brakes on its supposed hard right revolution. When the votes were tallied the evening of July 7th, it was the Left’s New Popular Alliance which came out on top, with the centrists second and the LaPen forces third. With the landslide victory of Britain’s left leaning Labor Party in the U.K. elections on July 4th, what appeared to be a consistent move to the right among EU nations, froze in place. Like the invasion of aliens in War of the Worlds, suddenly, the revolution came to a halt.
GRIDLOCK ISN’T JUST AN AMERICAN CONCEPT
When the numbers were tallied, no clear winner emerged, only a scenario of three competing forces in a French government able to accomplish nothing.
The Left had won 182 seats, Centrists 163 and the National Rally 143 seats. President Macron urged the parties to work together. With 289 seats in the majority in the National Assembly, the only way for anything to pass is by a coalition of adversaries. In the election aftermath, there was no far right government, no majority party. The politics of France was spinning like a wing nut. But Macron had gotten his way. He’d stopped LaPen, although in doing so he may have sacrificed his political career.
French farmers could have cared less. ∆
ROB MILLS: MidAmerica Farmer Grower Contributing Writer
THE TRACTOR PULL TO THE RIGHT
The farmer protests that began in the EU over 60 years ago, birthed a movement that by 2024 had become a political power in the EU and in France. The election results in France have been accurately described as resolving nothing. But it would be fair to say whoever the eventual winner is in this political upheaval, they will have to govern with farmers, who by 2024 had temporarily exchanged the ballot box, for their tried-and-true tactic of burning tractors to block roads. They’d finally gotten somewhere.
Along the way, farmers had made a friend, the European far right. In their opposition to socialism, they had become allies of what many Europeans consider to be the neo-fascist movement of the 21st Century. Getting tied up with alleged Nazi sympathizers, Putin allies and anti-immigrant factions considered to be racist, may not be the desired vehicle of the farmers efforts to find a fair deal. But it’s how things fell. Politics makes strange bedfellows.
And the fact that the engine that feeds Europe and much of the world is now identified with a political movement that is considered repugnant by millions in Europe is no recipe for harmony. Combine this with the current electoral madness in the United States, it’s easy to conclude these are uncertain times on both sides of the Atlantic.
If this turn of events had a soundtrack, a good fit would be R.E.M. singing “It’s the end of the world as we know it, but I feel fine.” After being stomped on all those years, Europe’s farmers have a voice. They must be listened to. Finally.