France is a great trading nation. France is the world’s sixth largest food exporter. Why are French farmers and French politicians so viscerally hostile to trade?
French farmers get over €9 billion a year in subsidies from Brussels, more than any other country. And yet they oppose any EU trade agreement which would help other industries but might provide limited competition to farmers.
EU subsidies are fine, they say, although never generous enough. EU trade deals with other countries are always bad.
The National Assembly will vote on two censure motions on Wednesday, which seek to topple the government because the EU plans to sign a trade deal with the Mercosur bloc of four South American countries.
France voted against the treaty last week, even though the EU had accepted most of its safeguard demands. The Far Right and Far Left are, nonetheless, trying to censure the government for something that it rejected.
They will fail but the oddities of France v Mercosur do not end there.
President Emmanuel Macron has been forced to oppose a long-awaited trade opening with South America which fits perfectly with his vision of a “strategic Europe” able to compete with the US and China.
Many French wine producers and dairy farmers will benefit from the Mercosur treaty, let alone French car and luxury goods workers. Their voices have scarcely been heard even in pro-business French newspapers like Le Figaro.
Almost all the debate has centred on the claims of beef and poultry and sugar producers that they face commercial “death” if the treaty goes ahead. “Mercosur, Mort à coup sur” [Mercosur, certain death] say the banners.
Really? The deal will increase tariff-reduced beef exports by only 1.6 percent of EU production. It will allow tariff free poultry imports by 1.4 percent of EU output and sugar by 1.1 percent of EU consumption.
Tariffs on EU industrial exports to Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay will be reduced by 90 percent. Restrictions on wine and cheese exports will be lifted. European “origin” labels will be respected.
A government motion rejecting the treaty in the National Assembly last month won by 484 votes to 70. Such a landslide reflects affection for - or fear of - French farmers. It bears no relation to the true balance of French national interests.
And yet, despite all the love and subsidies, many French farmers are suffering and failing. The armoured columns of €200,000 tractors which occupied avenues in Paris again this week suggest that farmers are richer than they claim.
Some may be. Others are struggling. I know from my own neighbours in Normandy that even medium to large beef farms depend on EU subsidies to survive.
Cattle farmers are now also threatened by scattered outbreaks of Lumpy Skin Disease, which has spread from Africa to the Balkans, Switzerland and France. Poor harvest for cereals and wine have seen France’s farm export surplus collapse in the last couple of years.
The agricultural anger is genuine. The Mercosur treaty is not its fundamental cause but it is a new rallying point. Why should we import ANY food from South America, the farmers say? Our prices are already low and European environmental and animal welfare rules much tougher than in Brazil or Argentina.
The farm crisis is complicated by the splintering of agricultural politics. Relations between the government and farmers were long dominated by the main farming union, the Fédération nationale des syndicats d'exploitants agricoles (FNSEA). That body was dominated in turn by the large, rich cereals farmers of northern France, who prevented a fairer share of EU subsidies from going to smaller farms in the centre and south.
The FNSEA is officially pro-EU and pro-trade but has never liked EU free-trade treaties. It now faces growing competition from Coordination Rurale, an anti-EU union associated with the Far Right and also from the Confédération Paysanne, a small farmers’ union which is broadly pro-left.
In other words, the new farm politics parallels the division of national politics into three camps of centre, far right and left. Most, but not all, of the aggressive blockades of recent days have been organised by the Le Pen-leaning Coordination Rural, which is fiercely nationalistic, anti-EU and anti-trade. Its politics make little sense for a great agricultural, trading nation like France but its support is rising in parallel with wider national support for the Far Right.
An obvious question arises. Why is French farming suffering despite all the subsidies and despite all the protests and despite all the political sympathy? There are many rival, technical and political explanations but here is my opinion after 30 years of writing about French farming.
France is paying for decades of political hypocrisy. Successive governments boasted that they represented a nation of “family farms” and “quality food”. They pursued policies in Brussels and Paris which favoured the mass-producing, chemical-drenched farms which made France a global, agricultural powerhouse. They did little until recent years to promote small-scale, quality food production.
A more balanced farm policy might have allowed both models to thrive. Something of that kind has been achieved in Italy, whose vote tipped the balance in favour of the Mercosur treaty in Brussels last week.
The Italian government decided that the country’s true interests lay in the new opportunities for Italian cars and high-quality Italian cooked meats, cheeses and wines - not protecting its beef and poultry farmers from minimal competition.
The same argument might have been made in France but was drowned out by the noise of tractor engines.
Comments (2)