Connect with us

World

Farmers from 12 EU countries continue to protest agricultural policies

Published

on

Farmers from 12 EU countries continue to protest agricultural policies

Farmers complain that the EU’s environmental policies, such as the Green Deal, and low-cost imports from third countries which they say don’t have to respect such high environmental standards.

ADVERTISEMENT

Farmers from 10 EU countries, ranging from Central Europe to the Baltics and the Balkans, were on Thursday participating in a protest against the bloc’s agriculture policies, bureaucracy and overall conditions for their business, organisers say.

Many of the farmers from the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and Slovakia, met at a number of border crossings.

Farmers complain that the EU’s environmental policies, such as the Green Deal, which calls for limits on the use of chemicals and on greenhouse gas emissions, limit their business and make their products more expensive than non-EU imports.

They also complain about low prices for their products and say grain and other agriculture products coming from Ukraine and Latin America negatively affect the market.

Farmers had invited Czech Agriculture Minister Marek Vyborny, his Slovak counterpart Richard Takac, and the representatives of farmers from Poland and Hungary to rally at a Czech-Slovak border crossing known as Hodonin-Holic, which was blocked by hundreds of tractors.

Advertisement

“We don’t protest against the EU, we protest against the wrong decisions by the European Commission,” said Andrej Gajdos from the Slovak Chamber of Agriculture and Food.

Elsewhere, clashes were reported on Thursday between Spanish farmers and police in Zaragoza, the capital of the northeastern Aragon region.

Talks between the government and farmers failed earlier this week with the biggest protest in weeks staged in Madrid on Wednesday.

The government has unveiled a package of 18 measures it said it will present to other EU member states at a meeting of agriculture ministers on February 26.

Carles Peris, Secretary General of the Union of Farmers and Stockbreeders of Valencia, said: “We want a law on the agri-food chain that is able to balance itself, it cannot be that those who generate the value, the producers, are the ones who receive the least money.” 

Advertisement

Spanish farmers plan to gather in their thousands in the country’s capital on Sunday.

In France, some farmers have indicated that they could block the opening on Saturday of the Salon International de L’Agriculture in Paris, which runs until March 3.

Protests were meanwhile held in several cities north of Paris on Thursday with one farmer in the Oise saying: “We feel like we’re being taken for a ride, in the sense that the government has promised us a lot of things that we still haven’t received.”

“This is to show them that we’re still here and we’re still waiting for answers,” he added.

The protests were held despite the government announcing on Wednesday a new bill to strengthen the law on agriculture and food and improve salaries in the sector.

Advertisement

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal also said several million euros would be paid as emergency aid, particularly to livestock farmers. 

The new law comes three weeks after the government unveiled a package of measures to stymie the protest movement that included no new pesticide ban “without a solution” and a ban on imports of fruits and vegetables coming from outside the EU that have been treated with Thiaclopride, an insecticide currently banned in the bloc. 

The government also said it would propose the creation of a “European control force” to combat fraud, particularly regarding health regulations, and fight against import of food products that go against European and French health standards. It also reaffirmed its opposition to the signing of the EU-Mercosur trade deal.

World

Video: Owner of Swiss Bar Detained in Fire Investigation

Published

on

Video: Owner of Swiss Bar Detained in Fire Investigation

new video loaded: Owner of Swiss Bar Detained in Fire Investigation

Prosecutors in Switzerland ordered Jacques Moretti to be detained after investigators questioned him and his wife, Jessica Moretti. Officials are looking into whether negligence played a role in last week’s deadly fire at their bar, Le Constellation.

By Meg Felling

January 9, 2026

Continue Reading

World

Greenland leaders push back on Trump’s calls for US control of the island: ‘We don’t want to be Americans’

Published

on

Greenland leaders push back on Trump’s calls for US control of the island: ‘We don’t want to be Americans’

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

Greenland’s leadership is pushing back on President Donald Trump as he and his administration call for the U.S. to take control of the island. Several Trump administration officials have backed the president’s calls for a takeover of Greenland, with many citing national security reasons.

“We don’t want to be Americans, we don’t want to be Danes, we want to be Greenlanders,” Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and four party leaders said in a statement Friday night, according to The Associated Press. Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory and a longtime U.S. ally, has repeatedly rejected Trump’s statements about U.S. acquiring the island.

Greenland’s party leaders reiterated that the island’s “future must be decided by the Greenlandic people.”

“As Greenlandic party leaders, we would like to emphasize once again our wish that the United States’ contempt for our country ends,” the statement said.

Advertisement

TRUMP SAYS US IS MAKING MOVES TO ACQUIRE GREENLAND ‘WHETHER THEY LIKE IT OR NOT’

Greenland has rejected the Trump administration’s push to take over the Danish territory. (Thomas Traasdahl/Ritzau Scanpix / AFP via Getty Images; Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Trump was asked about the push to acquire Greenland on Friday during a roundtable with oil executives. The president, who has maintained that Greenland is vital to U.S. security, said it was important for the country to make the move so it could beat its adversaries to the punch.

“We are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not,” Trump said Friday. “Because if we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland, and we’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor.”

Trump hosted nearly two dozen oil executives at the White House on Friday to discuss investments in Venezuela after the historic capture of President Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3.

Advertisement

“We don’t want to have Russia there,” Trump said of Venezuela on Friday when asked if the nation appears to be an ally to the U.S. “We don’t want to have China there. And, by the way, we don’t want Russia or China going to Greenland, which, if we don’t take Greenland, you can have Russia or China as your next-door neighbor. That’s not going to happen.” 

Trump said the U.S. is in control of Venezuela after the capture and extradition of Maduro. 

Nielsen has previously rejected comparisons between Greenland and Venezuela, saying that his island was looking to improve its relations with the U.S., according to Reuters.

A “Make America Go Away” baseball cap, distributed for free by Danish artist Jens Martin Skibsted, is arranged in Sisimiut, Greenland, on March 30, 2025. (Juliette Pavy/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

FROM CARACAS TO NUUK: MADURO RAID SPARKS FRESH TRUMP PUSH ON GREENLAND

Advertisement

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Monday that Trump’s threats to annex Greenland could mean the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

“I also want to make it clear that if the U.S. chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops. Including our NATO and thus the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War,” Frederiksen told Danish broadcaster TV2.

That same day, Nielsen said in a statement posted on Facebook that Greenland was “not an object of superpower rhetoric.”

Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen stands next to Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen during a visit to the Danish Parliament in Copenhagen on April 28, 2025. (Liselotte Sabroe/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images)

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Advertisement

White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller doubled down on Trump’s remarks, telling CNN in an interview on Monday that Greenland “should be part of the United States.”

CNN anchor Jake Tapper pressed Miller about whether the Trump administration could rule out military action against the Arctic island.

“The United States is the power of NATO. For the United States to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests, obviously Greenland should be part of the United States,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

World

What Canada, accustomed to extreme winters, can teach Europe

Published

on

Euronews spoke to Patrick de Bellefeuille, a prominent Canadian weather presenter and climate specialist, on how Europe could benefit from Canada’s long experience with snowstorms. He has been forecasting for MétéoMédia, Canada’s top French-language weather network, since 1988.

Continue Reading

Trending