Our meat, that jewel revered by the palates of the entire world, is in the sights, among other products, of Spanish farmers and ranchers, who are joining the wave of European agricultural protests.
They loudly denounce
the lack of protection
on the part of the policies that the European Union is carrying out.
“The entry of beef from South America, for example, could be a drag on national production.
The same thing happens with lamb from New Zealand or the import of tomatoes and vegetables from Morocco,” complained Miguel Padilla, general secretary of the Coordinator of Farmers and Livestock Organizations (COAG) of Spain.
This Friday, tractor-trailers were organized in Catalonia and Castilla y León.
Photo: CESAR MANSO / AFP
The protests,
led for two weeks
by French farmers, have their
own agenda
among Spanish agricultural producers.
This Friday, tractor-trailers were organized
in Catalonia and Castilla y León
and the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, received the agricultural representatives to prevent the planned demonstrations from multiplying and blocking or paralyzing the country.
"An agreement with Mercosur will not benefit us"
José Manuel Roche, secretary of international relations of the Union of Small Farmers and Ranchers (UPA), tells
Clarín
: “The forecasts indicate that farmers and ranchers
will not benefit from the agreement with Mercosur
.”
Although it is not yet closed or in force, this possible future agreement with the countries that make up the bloc - Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay -
worries the Spaniards
.
"If European farmers
produce with a series of criteria
, obligations and regulations in phytosanitary matters, labor matters and environmental matters, we ask that products that enter from third countries, in this case Mercosur,
have to comply with the same commitments
as us - Roche asks -.
If not, it is difficult for us to compete.”
“We believe that competition is good, in the domestic market and in the foreign market,” he says.
What rebels us and motivates our protest is
the injustice and inequality of treatment
and the lack of reciprocity that has been made in these types of agreements.”
The agricultural representative is critical: “The European Union signs trade agreements with many countries around the world in which we get the feeling that
agriculture is used as a currency
,” he maintains.
Spanish farmers drive their tractors along a route during a demonstration in León.
Photo: CESAR MANSO / AFP
“We, from Europe, can sell manufactured products and technology and, in exchange for these agreements, third countries provide us with agricultural or livestock food,” he emphasizes.
“We are not against the agreements, as we may be with Mercosur, but
there has not even been an impact evaluation
of how these agreements can affect nor are the interests of farmers taken into account at all.”
What does the EU-Mercosur agreement consist of?
“If the European Union (EU)-Mercosur agreement comes to fruition, the EU
will have agreements with 94 percent of Latin America's GDP
, compared to 44 percent for the United States and 14 percent for China.
"It would be
a non-negligible achievement
, since the EU would be the world power with a greater presence and deeper ties with the region," says Ernesto Talvi, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and current researcher at the Elcano Institute, in a document that the institute announced in September last year.
The report highlights “the
competitive threat
of Mercosur exports for agricultural producers.”
From Brussels, the president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, spoke on Thursday about the agreement.
“For Spain, Mercosur is key in that geopolitical, and also economic, relationship with
a continent to which we are united by so many things
,” he said at a press conference after the extraordinary meeting of European heads of state.
The police monitor an agrarian protest in Spain.
Photo: CESAR MANSO / AFP
But he clarified: “The agreement with Mercosur
is in the hands of the European Commission.
Trade policy is a common policy, he insisted.
It is the European Commission that negotiates on behalf of all member states.
We have tried to push as much as possible and move positions in Mercosur.
Unfortunately we have not been able to complete that important agreement.”
Less bureaucracy and regulations
Roche, from the Union of Small Farmers and Ranchers, clarifies that the conditions regarding the entry of products from other countries
is not the only complaint
of the sector.
They also ask for the simplification of bureaucracy and criticize the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), a European regulation that aims to guarantee food security by providing aid to farmers and ranchers so that they can increase their activity in a sustainable way that, for them, , ends up being complicated and not profitable.
“There are structural problems that in recent years have not been able to be solved by the different administrations, whether European, state or regional,” Roche clarifies.
“A
high production cost
to produce food, a remuneration in many cases below what our products cost us, make agricultural activity
unviable
,” he laments.
“We must add the different animal welfare and environmental regulations that the European Union imposes on farmers,” says Roche.
The excessive amount of EU regulations
This Friday, the Minister of Agriculture admitted: “The successive accumulation of many regulations has produced an unbearable level of administrative burden for many farmers and ranchers,” said Planas after meeting with representatives of the Young Farmers Agrarian Association (ASAJA), of the Coordinator of Farmers and Ranchers Organizations (COAG) and the Union of Small Farmers and Ranchers (UPA).
“There are zero tariff or reduced tariff quotas,” he admitted about trade agreements that allow the entry of products from third countries.
“They are effectively controlled by member states and European customs.
We have to see that the amounts that have been agreed upon are met and respected,” said the minister.
And he highlighted: “In the year 2000, the Spanish agri-food balance was negative: we bought more than we sold.
Today 70,185 million euros of exports with a positive balance of 14,900 million euros.”
Spanish farmers responded this Friday that
they will maintain the mobilizations
if there are no concrete measures to their demands.
Barricades in Brussels
On Thursday, thousands of farmers
blocked the center of Brussels
with their tractors, set fires in front of the European Parliament headquarters and tore down a statue in Luxembourg Square in the Belgian capital.
Video
Farmers protest wage and tax regulations.
They demonstrated on the same day that Brussels was hosting a summit of heads of state and prime ministers of the 27 countries that make up the European Union.
The closure of more than one hundred routes caused throughout the week by French agricultural protests generated
friction with Spanish truckers
who were blocked and faced with the risk of not delivering perishable merchandise on time.
Even Spanish tankers containing wine were emptied.
After two weeks of complaints,
the French lifted the barricades this Thursday,
when Prime Minister Gabriel Attal promised them a package of measures that will relieve the sector.
Among them,
the lifting of the ban on the use of certain pesticides
that are authorized in other countries of the European Union, as well as
the blockade of the import of fruits and vegetables
arriving from third countries, outside the Shengen area, that have been cultivated with thiaclopride, an insecticide banned within the Union.
Even the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, met with them on Thursday.
“I am sensitive to the request to reduce the administrative burden,” she said.
"The Spanish tomato is unbeatable"
Pedro Sánchez, for his part, highlighted his country's positioning: "Spain is among the top ten producers by surface area, both at European and global level, in organic farming."
In the midst of the political gale that is trying to be overcome by the amnesty law for the Catalan independence movement, the Spanish president came out to defend the tomatoes of his land.
Among the criticisms raised by the competition of products from different countries, the former French minister Ségolène Royal
had defenestrated the Spanish garden:
“Have you tried organic tomatoes from Spain?
“They are inedible,” said the former minister.
“I think that Mrs. Royal has not had the fortune of trying the Spanish tomato,” Sánchez retorted.
I invite her to come to Spain, to try any of the Spanish tomato varieties, and she will see that
the Spanish tomato is unbeatable
.”
“It is unbeatable,” the head of the Spanish government repeated, seriously.