Why are farmers protesting across the EU and what can the bloc do about it?

Hundreds of tractors choked Brussels city centre on Thursday and angry farmers pelted the European parliament with eggs. Although agriculture was not on the agenda for EU leaders meeting just up the road, politicians may find that they ignore these grievances at their peril.

Here is a look at what lies behind the farmers’ protests that have been sweeping Europe for months – in countries such as Greece, Germany, Portugal, Poland and France, where the government was taken by surprise this week by a motorway blockade of Paris.

Some concerns, such as a plan by Berlin to phase out tax breaks on agricultural diesel to balance the budget, or a requirement in the Netherlands to reduce nitrogen emissions – are country-specific. But many are shared continent-wide.

Farmers have said they face falling sale prices, rising costs, heavy regulation, powerful and domineering retailers, debt, climate change and cheap foreign imports, all within an EU agricultural system based on the premise that “bigger is better”.

Costs are up, prices are down

Farmers’ costs – notably for energy, fertiliser and transport – have risen in many EU countries, particularly since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. At the same time, governments and retailers, mindful of the cost of living crisis’s effect on consumers, have moved to reduce rising food prices.

Farm-gate prices – the base price farmers receive for their produce – dropped by almost 9% on average between the third quarter of 2022 and the same period last year, according to Eurostat data analysed by Politico, with only a few products – including olive oil, hit by shortages – bucking the trend.

Imports are also a bugbear, particularly in central and eastern Europe, where a flood of cheap agricultural produce from Ukraine – on which the EU waived quotas and duties following Russia’s invasion – has depressed prices and increased resentment about unfair competition.

Polish farmers began blocking roads from Ukraine in protest as early as last spring, and although Brussels soon imposed restrictions on Kyiv’s exports to its near neighbours, as soon as they expired Hungary, Poland and Slovakia each announced their own.

“Ukrainian grain should go where it belongs, to the Asian or African markets, not to Europe,” the Polish farmers’ trade union said last month.

Elsewhere in Europe, notably in France, cheap imports from farther afield are a source of mounting anger. Produce from countries such as New Zealand and Chile is resented for not having to comply with the same strict regulations as EU farmers.

Negotiations to conclude a wide-ranging trade deal between the EU and South America’s Mercosur trading bloc have been a target of particular anger, with European farmers unhappy at the prospect of unfair competition in sugar, grain and meat.

Rising temperatures, rising tensions

Extreme weather events due to climate change are increasingly affecting production: some water reservoirs in southern Spain stand at only 4% capacity, while wildfires wiped out about 20% of Greek annual farm revenue last year.

Southern Europe has so far seen relatively few protests, but that could change as governments, notably in Spain and Portugal, consider emergency water restrictions amid record-breaking droughts.

More widely, besides feeling persecuted by what they see as a Brussels bureaucracy that knows little about their business, many farmers complain they feel caught between apparently conflicting public demands for cheap food and climate-friendly processes.

Related: ‘Hypocritical’ European politicians weaken climate policies amid farmer protests

And to CAP it all off …

The common agricultural policy (CAP), the €55bn-a-year subsidy system on which Europe’s food security has rested for more than 60 years, has historically been based on economy of scale: bigger farms, bigger holdings, common standards.

That has encouraged consolidation – the number of farms in the EU has fallen by more than a third since 2005 – leaving many larger farms with high levels of debt in a low-margin business and smaller ones increasingly uncompetitive.

More recently, the farming sector, which accounts for 11% of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions, is increasingly alarmed by rules in the EU’s “farm to fork” strategy, part of the key European green deal aimed at making the bloc climate-neutral by 2050.

Targets include halving pesticides by 2030, cutting fertiliser use by 20%, devoting more land to non-agricultural use – for example, by leaving it fallow or planting non-productive trees – and doubling organic production to 25% of all EU farmland.

Many farmers already complain that existing EU rules in areas such as irrigation and animal welfare are interpreted too strictly. They argue incoming green policies are unfair, unrealistic, economically unviable and will ultimately be self-defeating.

What are politicians doing to try to quell the protests – and will they succeed?

National governments have taken steps: Berlin watered down its plans to cut diesel subsidies; Paris scrapped a diesel tax increase, delayed other measures and pledged €150m in help, prompting farmers’ unions to call on members to suspend their protest.

“Everywhere in Europe the same question arises: how do we continue to produce more but better? How can we continue to tackle climate change? How can we avoid unfair competition from foreign countries?”, said Gabriel Attal, the French prime minister on Thursday.

At the EU level, the European Commission has proposed limiting agricultural imports from Ukraine via an “emergency brake”, and exempting farmers for 2024 from an obligation to keep 4% of their land fallow while still receiving EU subsidies.

Anxious not to further upset an already rebellious sector, Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, and Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s prime minister, have said the proposed EU-Mercosur trade deal should not be signed in its present form.

With the farmers increasingly drawing support from Europe’s far-right parties, which are expected to make significant gains in European parliament elections due in June, further concessions seem more than likely.