The French farmer on a tractor is back — running the EU

 

PARIS — Protesting farmer Damien Radet, stationed at a highway roadblock outside Paris, had a blunt message for the politicians who lead France and the European Union.

He demanded a "stop and reversal" of strict EU environmental standards and protection against import competition — including a halt to what he called massive food imports from Ukraine.

"We need more consideration from the state for those who work to feed us," Radet, a local official from the FNSEA farm union, told POLITICO.

Within days, President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had folded comprehensively to a group that, in France, makes up just 1.5 percent of the population.

Undoing years of work on her environmental agenda, von der Leyen reversed green farming rules, restricted food imports from Ukraine, and killed a plan to slash pesticide use. With a European election looming, neither Paris nor Brussels dared to pick a fight with farmers prepared to dump Spanish tomatoes on the roads of southern France or mount a raid on a food logistics hub on the outskirts of the capital.

Several EU officials acknowledged that some of the changes directly resulted from the farmers' protests around the continent.

The same happened in France where, by his own admission, newly-appointed Prime Minister Gabriel Attal gave in to farmers’ demands in a bid to “answer [their] expectations.” He ordered a pause on new pesticide bans, a U-turn on a price hike on tractor fuel, and pledged to go no further than EU law requires on environmental restrictions...

The authors describe the immediate impact on policy in the EU but what do they say about the upcoming US elections? Not much:

And Biden, who’s struggling to get a handle on worrisome poll numbers, got Trump to agree to the earliest-ever general election debate, scheduled for June 27.

For climate and energy policy in the United States, instability is par for the course.

U.S. energy and climate policy have been zigging and zagging since the end of the Clinton presidency. President Barack Obama took a chisel to President George W. Bush’s oil-friendly policies. Trump took a hammer to Obama’s Paris agreement. And Biden overcame united Republican opposition when he redefined what it is to offer federal support for clean energy technology by signing the Inflation Reduction Act.

It is pretty easy to see these reporters are not happy with the way green policies are "zigging". In fact, they seem downright resentful that farmers were so effective with their potests.