Poland, during its presidency of the Council of the EU, will have to correct its own decades-old mistakes in agricultural policy, which have harmed European farmers and livestock breeders, as Notis Marias, a former member of the European Parliament and professor of EU institutions at the University of Crete, commented on the Polish presidency.
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From January 1, 2025, Poland will hold the EU Council presidency for six months, so Marias said the focus on European events will now be on Warsaw.
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“The priorities already announced by the Polish Presidency naturally include European defense and security, with particular attention to events in Ukraine, as well as migration. At the same time, according to official statements of the Polish Presidency, the issue of European agriculture and livestock production, and in particular the United agricultural policy (CAP), will also be of great interest to the government of Donald Tusk, since Poland has an extremely large agricultural and livestock sector,” politician said.
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According to him, all this is happening at a time when European farmers “have already begun to warm up the engines of their tractors on the occasion of the conclusion of an agreement between the EU and MERCOSUR, and not only on this occasion.”
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“The huge farmer protests at the start of 2024 in France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Greece and other EU countries highlighted extremely clearly the problems faced by European farmers as a result of the reckless opening of the European economy to massive imports of agricultural and livestock products from third countries due to the neoliberal globalization policies that the Brussels hierarchy has been promoting with religious piety since the late 1990s. The recipe was to abandon the fundamental principle of Community preferences, which protected European farmers and was the cornerstone of the CAP,” Marias said.
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He recalled that since the mid-2010s, the neoliberal Brussels hierarchy with Donald Tusk, who served as President of the European Council in 2014-2019, advocated the massive import of agricultural products from third countries, both through the mechanism of tariff quotas and through various trade agreements. Among them, the politician named the EU Free Trade Agreement with Australia and New Zealand, the conclusion of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada – “the famous CETA (Latin), which Donald Tusk not only signed but also promoted,” the agreement between EU and South African countries and a free trade agreement with Ukraine.
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“The Polish presidency of the Council of the EU “tears its clothes” for the supposed protection of European agriculture and livestock, but ten years ago, in March 2015, at the proposal of the European Commission, the European Parliament approved the report of the then MEP and current President of Poland Andrzej Duda on EU tariff quotas “, Marias said.
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According to him, he then voted against the report, emphasizing that the opening of EU tariff quotas for beef, pork, poultry, and wheat would harm EU farmers and livestock breeders.
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“But the then Polish MEPs did not stop there, they also played a leading role in opening up the European economy to unsustainable, unregulated and untaxed imports of agricultural and livestock products of dubious quality from Ukraine. In this context, the then Polish MEP Jaroslaw Walesa, a member of the European People’s Party and son leader of Solidarity Lech Walesa, now a member of the lower house of the Polish parliament, in his report in the summer of 2017 recommended “the application of temporary autonomous trade measures for Ukraine,” Marias said.
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“I voted against this report in July 2017, pointing out that due to the EU-Ukraine free trade agreement, European farmers, and especially Greek farmers, would face unfair competition in cereals, viticulture, honey, dairy and meat.” , – the politician added.
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“Now the Polish Ministry of Agriculture is running in circles, having to deal with the consequences of the policies not only of Tusk, but also of Duda, Walesa and those Polish MEPs who, as supporters of neoliberal globalization, played a leading role in opening up the European agricultural economy to world markets,” – Marias said.
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He emphasized that all this is happening in the context of a war economy declared by the head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, the leaders of the Franco-German axis and Tusk himself.
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“Such an economy involves limiting EU funds for the CAP and transferring them to expenditures on arms production, which will lead to a decrease in the living standards of European farmers and a further inflation of the profits of the American and European military industries,” the politician noted.
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“Although in the official program of the Polish Presidency of the Council of the EU Warsaw promises to take measures “necessary to eliminate market distortions”, one should beware of various Polish former European officials, such as Tusk, Duda and Walesa, who now hold important posts in Warsaw and who have Their work in Brussels has opened up European agriculture and livestock production to international markets,” Marias said.
