Ahmati, Romania – Amidst the rows of noisy cars blocking Bucharest's ring road, a farmer appears carrying a lamb with a Romanian flag around his neck.
“We became slaves to Europe,” Giocel, 47, said as he petted the young animal, his cheeks rosy in the freezing temperatures of late January. “That's no longer possible!”
Next to him, a man waved a flag as dozens of tractors and trucks blocked traffic, honking their horns incessantly.
“We have all the expensive diesel, gasoline, insurance… we have everything in our country, but we end up working elsewhere,” Giocel said in the past 30 years. He spoke, referring to the fact that 5 million Romanians immigrate each year.
Danut Andrus, an agricultural entrepreneur from Botošani, walks through the crowd wearing a white woolen hat and a yellow visibility vest, recording videos and using the hashtag #fermieri (“peasant” in Romanian). He uploaded it to his TikTok page. Some of his videos have garnered over 300,000 views.
Information about the plight of farmers is attracting more and more people's attention.
In Romania, which has the largest number of farmers in the European Union (about 3.5 million, according to the European Commission), members of the agriculture and transport sectors have been protesting since January 10, many with groups of tractors and trucks. Protests are being held all over the place. Country.
Their 47-point demands, outlined in a 20-page document submitted to the government, include lower diesel taxes, lower compulsory civil liability insurance (RCA) for motor vehicles, and lower operating costs for drivers in Ukraine. This includes ending actions that are considered to be unfair competition with other companies. It also does not require a transport permit to operate within the EU (this was lifted by the EU following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022).
“It all started with a WhatsApp group,” Andrus said. He has become one of the faces of the protests, negotiating the farmers' claims with the Romanian government. He told Al Jazeera that he had even tried to establish a pro-peasant political party, but that he had failed.
A protest scheduled for January 10 in Bucharest took place on a road near a commune called Ahmati, about 20 kilometers from the capital, after some protesters were refused entry by police because they did not have permits. . When permission was finally granted by the local government on January 21, protesters remained in Ahmati, alleging far-right political interference.
On January 14, Romanian farmers also blocked the Sylhet border crossing with Ukraine and two entrances to Romania's Black Sea port of Constanta, an important transport hub for Ukrainian grain.
The protesters' concerns are echoed by some Romanian residents who are not farmers.
“[Vehicle] Insurance is very expensive,” said Deaconu, who drives a Bolt taxi. Although he and other drivers agree with the farmers' cause, they have not taken part in the protests.
Sorin Ionita, a consultant with the World Bank Group in Romania, said there were accusations that many of the protesters were “not ordinary farmers, but rather small and medium-sized enterprises in the field with land and expensive agricultural equipment.” He explained.
growing dissatisfaction
Farmer dissatisfaction across Europe has been growing in recent months.
It began in 2019 when Dutch farmers blocked roads across the Netherlands in protest against government plans to limit nitrogen emissions. In the second half of 2023, gatherings became more active. In late December, Polish truck drivers blocked the Medica border crossing with Ukraine and demanded that Ukrainian drivers have their permits reinstated. And in early January, Polish farmers took to the streets to protest against cheap imports. On January 15, 10,000 German farmers, accompanied by 5,000 tractors, rallied in Berlin to protest plans to cut agricultural fuel subsidies.
Videos of the protests went viral on social networks. A video of a tractor blocking a road in Germany has received more than 7 million views on TikTok, while a video of French farmers dumping fertilizer and straw on government buildings has received more than 1 million views. A compilation of videos of tractors blocking roads in several countries, accompanied by the message: “Impressive.” A pan-European revolution against governments, the EU and the 2030 Agenda” – widely shared on WhatsApp.
The most violent protests occurred in France, the EU's largest agricultural producer. Since mid-January, thousands of farmers have been blocking roads, burning tires and spreading fertilizer at the entrances to various government buildings across the country. In southern France, protesters destroyed several trucks transporting wine and vegetables from Spain and Morocco to protest cheap imports, the Spanish Confederation of Freight Transport (CETM) said.
French farmers say President Emmanuel Macron's government is fighting inflation at their expense, forcing food producers to cut prices. They also blame low wages and excessive bureaucracy, including a mandatory 4 percent fallow of land to promote biodiversity and a reduction in the use of chemical pesticides to receive aid from Europe. are concerned about the impact of the EU's environmental policy.
FNSEA, France's largest agricultural union, called for a reconsideration of “the very idea of the Green Deal, which assumes that degrowth needs to be reconsidered in order to restore farmers' visibility”, among other claims.
A recent opinion poll revealed that 82 percent of French people support the peasant movement.
Olivier, who works at a vegetable farm on Rue Mouffetard in Paris, agreed with the protest and said the EU was demanding more from France when it came to climate change targets. He pointed to two boxes of oranges, one from Italy for 5.80 euros ($6.30) per kilogram and one from France for 7.90 euros ($8.57). French farmers claim their vegetables are more expensive because they use less pesticides.
Paradoxically, while food prices are higher for consumers, the benefits for farmers are decreasing.Yannick Jadot, French ecologist and member of parliament recently declared Citing data from the Mutualite Sociale Agricole (MSA), the Franceinfo network reports that a third of French farmers live below the poverty line and that two farmers commit suicide every day. .
The farmers' protests are the first on the agenda for France's new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. He responded on January 26 by withdrawing plans to increase taxes on agricultural fuels.
Tractor goes viral on TikTok
Populist parties have been accused of exploiting farmers' anger. “They are not just exploiting the protests, they are inciting them,” explains Claudiu Craciun, a lecturer at the National School of Political Science and Public Administration in Bucharest. “For months, we have seen on social media how far-right groups continue to share posts from protests in the Netherlands and Germany.”
However, Craciun pointed out that the protesters do not want to be associated with the far right.
Up to 5,000 people and 100 people will attend an event in Bucharest's Constitution Square after learning that a request for a protest in the capital on January 21st was submitted by a lawyer close to Romania's far-right senator Diana Sosoacca. Most of the protesters who had been allowed to participate did not participate. tractor. Only one tractor appeared.
A recent survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) found that European political parties were closely monitoring protests ahead of June's European Parliament elections, which saw a “significant shift to the right.” It is expected.
The survey found that anti-EU populists came first in nine countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Poland and Slovakia) and could secure second or third place in a further nine countries. has been shown to be high.
Mifnea Dumitru, a Bucharest-based political analyst with a PhD on the influence of the internet on Romanian elections, said social media plays a “huge, if sometimes detrimental role” in elections. Stated. “There is a lack of moderation on these networks, and not enough efforts are being made by companies and even local civil society to combat fake news,” he said.
Dumitru said “secret” Facebook groups spewing racist propaganda in Romania, as well as videos on TikTok and YouTube, “contain dangerous political messages that are marketed as funny rather than worrying.” he pointed out.
“With the advent of video content and a preference for more polarized politics, TikTok has recently taken the throne as the fastest growing app among Romanians,” Dumitru added. According to DataReportal, the domestic TikTok user base surged from 175,000 in 2019 to 7.58 million in 2023, with a notable increase of 1.2 million users from 2022 to 2023.
According to TikTok's 2023 Full DSA Transparency Report, France has the most active TikTok users in the EU (21.4 million), followed by Germany (20.9 million) and Italy (19.7 million). ing.
Dumitru believes that the availability of cheap and fast mobile internet in rural Romania has enabled “massive online communication” about the protests.
In the biggest election year in world history, Romania will hold four elections, including local, presidential and parliamentary elections, as well as the European Parliament vote in early June.
Dumitru explained that right-wing parties “brought public grievances into the public arena, which inflated their electoral intentions.” He noted that a surprising aspect of these protests in Romania was “how quickly these parties tried to control them and failed.”