Quite. Urban technocrats who have never got their hands dirty thinking up their utopian policies to impose on the grafters who have worked the land all their lives. Little wonder things went squiffy as soon as the rubber hits the road.
Nik Jewell
2 months ago
It won’t be “Ukrainian” grain for much longer. 30% of grain production has already been sold to multinationals. The price of rebuilding the country will be that almost all will eventually be sold off.
I thought you meant that it would soon become Russian grain…
Nell Clover
2 months ago
The EU and its envoys like Tusk are not rethinking anything. They were pushing for completely disastrous goals. Now journalists queue up to report that they’re listening and retreating. Yet the revised proposals being trailed are simply slightly less disastrous goals. Is the media really this supine or credulous? Honestly, do writers not understand the Overton window or even the very basic concept of haggling? Here we are all now jolly relieved that they’re only going to reduce meat farming by 20% in a decade.
They are simply ducking a while before the elections.
Nothing has changed, and it will be business as usual the day after.
Unless they are tried, and punished, for treason…
El Uro
2 months ago
“Poland’s rural populists”
Shame on you, Michal Kranz!
Pip G
2 months ago
I thought the Common Agricultural Policy protected EU agriculture. Perhaps it has been changed. You can understand Tusk wanting to help his own citizens.
Not when he spent several years trying to make life as hard as possible for the UK when we wanted to help our own citizens, i.e. Brexit. But then, we always knew the European Council were a bunch of self-serving hypocrites.
Alex Lekas
2 months ago
He has also said he will oppose an extension of the EU’s free trade deal with Ukraine that has driven many farmers and truckers to despair,
What interesting times we live in when a politician who puts national interests first is somehow guilty of protectionism or the new boogeyman of populism. If a deal is harming your own people, then it’s not a terribly good deal, is it? It doesn’t – or shouldn’t – matter what Tusk’s motivation is. What matters is whether what he’s doing is good or bad for Poles and Poland.
Everything in life is not about optics or theater, not even in politics which are often driven by both. Govt is not about having the right or wrong people in power, it’s about having them do the right things. They respond to incentives just like people in every other industry do. When it’s politically advantageous to do the right things, whether it’s the right or wrong people doing them is immaterial.
Stephen Barnard
2 months ago
This is just a precursor to a broader EU problem when Ukraine joins. Perhaps someone remembers or has access to the exact numbers, but I believe they are something like 17 hectares being the average size of a farm in the EU, compared with the Ukrainian average of 1,000 hectares…
Goodness. Life in Brussels and reality have turned out to be two entirely separate things. Who’d have thought?
Quite. Urban technocrats who have never got their hands dirty thinking up their utopian policies to impose on the grafters who have worked the land all their lives. Little wonder things went squiffy as soon as the rubber hits the road.
It won’t be “Ukrainian” grain for much longer. 30% of grain production has already been sold to multinationals. The price of rebuilding the country will be that almost all will eventually be sold off.
I thought you meant that it would soon become Russian grain…
The EU and its envoys like Tusk are not rethinking anything. They were pushing for completely disastrous goals. Now journalists queue up to report that they’re listening and retreating. Yet the revised proposals being trailed are simply slightly less disastrous goals. Is the media really this supine or credulous? Honestly, do writers not understand the Overton window or even the very basic concept of haggling? Here we are all now jolly relieved that they’re only going to reduce meat farming by 20% in a decade.
They are simply ducking a while before the elections.
Nothing has changed, and it will be business as usual the day after.
Unless they are tried, and punished, for treason…
“Poland’s rural populists”
Shame on you, Michal Kranz!
I thought the Common Agricultural Policy protected EU agriculture. Perhaps it has been changed. You can understand Tusk wanting to help his own citizens.
Not when he spent several years trying to make life as hard as possible for the UK when we wanted to help our own citizens, i.e. Brexit. But then, we always knew the European Council were a bunch of self-serving hypocrites.
He has also said he will oppose an extension of the EU’s free trade deal with Ukraine that has driven many farmers and truckers to despair,
What interesting times we live in when a politician who puts national interests first is somehow guilty of protectionism or the new boogeyman of populism. If a deal is harming your own people, then it’s not a terribly good deal, is it? It doesn’t – or shouldn’t – matter what Tusk’s motivation is. What matters is whether what he’s doing is good or bad for Poles and Poland.
Everything in life is not about optics or theater, not even in politics which are often driven by both. Govt is not about having the right or wrong people in power, it’s about having them do the right things. They respond to incentives just like people in every other industry do. When it’s politically advantageous to do the right things, whether it’s the right or wrong people doing them is immaterial.
This is just a precursor to a broader EU problem when Ukraine joins. Perhaps someone remembers or has access to the exact numbers, but I believe they are something like 17 hectares being the average size of a farm in the EU, compared with the Ukrainian average of 1,000 hectares…
Is ‘populist’ simply a synonym for ‘democrat’?
Yes, everywhere and always.
Time for the dismemberment of the EU and NATO.
Putin would love it!