Marie Hyland, Massimiliano Mascherini, and Michele Lamont
From late 2023 until the spring of 2024, farmers across Europe flooded capitals to voice their disapproval of national and European Union policies. Tractors rolled down boulevards as protesters blocked streets and caused havoc. The anger reached the heart of the EU, where demonstrators brought the Brussels city center to a standstill and pelted the European Parliament building with eggs.
The protesters had a multitude of concerns, but chief among them was the European Green Deal, launched by the European Commission in 2019, a package of policy initiatives that included new restrictions on the use of pesticides, bans on combustion engines, and the protection of biodiversity—all measures that came with costs for farmers. Many farmers also saw the possibility of more stringent demands on the agricultural sector to cut greenhouse gas emissions as a threat to their livelihoods. With EU parliamentary elections slated for June, the protests unnerved many politicians and led to the rollback of some planned legislative changes.
But the demonstrations did not just take the measure of farmers’ unhappiness. They were also a manifestation of a deeper problem, a widening divide between Europe’s rural areas and its cities. This divide may not be a chasm yet, but it is steadily growing wider as discontent mounts in rural communities, which constitute a quarter of Europe’s population.
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