Slovak farmers are ready to join their European counterparts in their protests, which have shaken many countries in recent weeks.
Why Slovak farmers will join the protests
The Slovak Chamber of Agriculture and Food states Brussels and its "green" policy are at the root of the problematic situation of European farmers.
This also includes problems related to the poor management of the Slovak Agricultural Payment Agency (APA) and the definition of the national strategic implementation plan.
For example, for the first time in the country's 19 years of EU membership, the agency failed to make direct payments on time, and several farmers are still waiting for their money. The main reasons for this are the unpreparedness of the APA and excessive national legislation.
Last week, the European Commission met some of the farmers' demands. It proposed to extend the suspension of import duties and quotas to export Ukrainian agricultural products to the EU for another year but with restrictions. She also proposed allowing EU farmers to continue being exempt from rules requiring farms to leave land fallow until the end of 2024.
But Slovak farmers consider such concessions "pseudo-concessional", and SPPK head Emil Macko called them "the last straw for both European and Slovak farmers."
Farmers are protesting, burning tyres, filling administrative centres with manure in half of the EU countries — this is just a consequence of what often leads to green fanaticism in the EU, he added.
Macko says that Slovak farmers are ready to protest and will coordinate their actions with farmers from neighbouring Visegrad countries.
He also warns that they will take "hundreds of tractors" to the streets, as farmers in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Romania, Poland, Greece, Portugal and the Netherlands have already done.
In addition to the 5-6% of arable land not cultivated in EU countries, Macko points to many farmers no longer working in the fields but sitting in offices trying to "fill in the EU's often meaningless administrative rules".
Farmers have announced a new strike with a checkpoint blockade at Ukraine's border
Polish farmers plan to block all border crossings between Poland and Ukraine from February 9 to March 10.
On February 9, Hungarian farmers will also block the "Zachony — Chop" checkpoint.
They oppose the European Commission's proposal to extend the duty-free regime for exports from Ukraine until the middle of 2025. It provides quotas for poultry meat, eggs and sugar. Tariffs will be imposed on them if their exports exceed the average annual volumes of imports for 2022 and 2023.
Earlier, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary demanded that the European Union introduce import duties on grain from Ukraine, which the EC refused.
