Flemish Environment Minister Zuhal Demir (N-VA) thinks it is unfair that she and her party in particular are being blamed by angry farmers. “People like to create the perception that the N-VA is against farmers, but that is not true. Who walked the hand of Frans Timmermans (the man behind the European Green Deal, which should make Europe climate neutral by 2050, ed.)? It was not me. On the contrary,” she argued in VTM News.
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Demir says he understands the farmers’ protest. “They have been walking around with their frustrations for thirty years. This has to do with the fact that European agricultural policy pays too little attention to a model where the farmer is central and is the price setter of his own product,” she believes. “When Prime Minister De Croo says that there are too many Flemish rules: almost 70 to 80 percent of those rules come from Europe. And he approved it in full. The federal government was the one that said the Green Deal was great and good.”
According to her, it is not correct that the N-VA is against the farmers. “Who took the hand of Frans Timmermans? It was not me. On the contrary. I warned for four years that we needed to know what the impact would be of all those plans in Flanders. Just think of the manure action plans. Six were made and they are very complex indeed. Every rule that one wants to introduce has ten to twenty exceptions, which indeed gives the farmer the feeling that he is more of an accountant than a farmer.”
Army
She calls the fact that Demir even wanted to send the army against the farmers – as Prime Minister De Croo said in an interview – categorically incorrect. “No one asked for the army to be sent against them. We only said that the blockades are holding the country hostage and that you must ensure that you intervene when the need arises. That doesn’t mean you have to send in the army,” she says.
“What has really bothered me in recent weeks is that it is getting hot under everyone’s feet and that the ball is being passed on to other parties,” she continues. “That has to stop. That does not help agriculture and farmers. We must conduct the discussion structurally and fundamentally. This is about the farmer’s income. There are several players throughout the agro-food industry chain and some are unfortunately much more powerful than the farmers. I think we should look at this fundamentally at European level and at federal level.”
Regulator
In that context, it is open to a regulator, an independent body that can intervene if the farmer receives too little and the profit margin of all parties in the food chain is not properly distributed. “So it is not true that we do not care about the farmers. Otherwise, we would not have released 2.4 billion euros in the context of the nitrogen agreement to support farmers,” she says.
WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH ZUHAL DEMIR HERE:
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