FARMER PROTESTS IN THE CENTRAL - EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES: CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCE

DOI 10.33305/246-109

Issue № 6, 2024, article № 13, pages 109-118

Section: ABROAD

Language: Russian

Original language title: ФЕРМЕРСКИЕ ПРОТЕСТЫ В СТРАНАХ ЦЕНТРАЛЬНО-ВОСТОЧНОЙ ЕВРОПЫ: ПРИЧИНЫ И ПОСЛЕДСТВИЯ

Keywords: CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE, THE EUROPEAN UNION, RUSSIA, AGRICULTURAL STRATEGY «FARM TO FORK», COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY, FARMERS PROTESTS

Abstract: The article examines the causes, driving forces and the first results of the farmer protests, unprecedented in scale, severity and socio-political significance, in the EU countries in late 2023-early 2024. Their interrelation with the implementation of the new agrarian strategy and the resulting reform of the EU Common Agricultural Policy is analyzed. It shows that the European farmers are aware that the planned scale and dynamics of the "eco-climatic" transformations of the EU agricultural sector, combined with its progressive openness to external food suppliers, are fraught with an unacceptable decline in regional production and self-sufficiency in food, the ruin of a large number of farms (especially small and medium-sized family farms) and the destruction of their way of life, which is the basis for a normal functioning of many rural regions. Mass farmer protests have swept 70% of the Western EU countries. In the Central and Eastern European region, which is growing in importance for food security of the European Union, protests (and of a particularly acute nature) covered 90% of countries. Their farmers, in general, are worse than farmers in Western EU countries in terms of production, technology, organizational and economic readiness to fulfill the goals and measures of the new agricultural strategy. In addition, the markets of the countries of the region, especially those neighboring Ukraine, were sharply negatively affected by the almost uncontrolled import of cheap Ukrainian food. The authorities of a number of countries and EU institutions have made concessions (not yet strategic) to farmers. Taking into account the nature of the ongoing processes, the article examines some of their possible consequences for the development of the EU agri-food complex, including its relations with Russia.

Authors: Frumkin Boris Efimovich