The EU was wrong to force farmers to
leave their fields fallow for a year to cut climate-impacting
emissions, to allow cheap Ukrainian imports in and to enact
another set of policies penalising the agricultural sector, and
now the EU must change, Premier Giorgia Meloni said after an EU
summit on Thursday.
"I was the political leader of a party (the rightwing Brothers
of Italy, ed.) that voted against most of the issues now
criticised by farmers in the EU," she said.
"In Italy we have already done our best but European policy must
be changed, I have asked for greater efforts but a change of
line may come after the European elections, hoping that a
different approach will prevail from the ideological one seen so
far", she said, referring to policies aimed at mitigating the
climate disaster.
Representatives of the largest Belgian and European farmers'
associations will meet the President of the European Commission,
Ursula von der Leyen, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo
and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in Brussels this afternoon.,
announced the Belgian EU presidency-in-office and Copa-Cogeca,
the association of EU agricultural cooperatives.
The talks come after a day of high tension in Brussels, where
more than a thousand tractors blocked the streets of the
European Parliament quarter while the extraordinary EU leaders'
summit on the EU budget was in progress.
Farmers have also been halting traffic in Italy in a string of
protests against EU policy.
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