Food security is one of the reasons why the EU should give more money to farmers after the pandemic, said Poland.
The European agricultural sector "has played an extremely important role in ensuring our security" as European and global trade come to a complete halt, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in a letter to other European leaders on May 11. , seen by EUobserver.
Farmers in the bloc "have guaranteed a constant supply of food to areas affected by the pandemic," he said.
But the farmers are "aging", the sector is not attracting young people and "the number of farms is decreasing", he warned.
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Poland, which has one of the most important agricultural sectors in Europe, is one of the main beneficiaries of the EU's common agricultural policy.
But a right-wing Polish government in the past five years has opposed its European peers over judicial reform, migrants and the climate, prompting talk of budget cuts in the next budget. from the EU seven years.
Poland, for example, does not want to participate in the green agreement, the EU’s ambition to become carbon neutral.
But despite the political context, Morawiecki asked Polish farmers for more money in 2021-2027 and said he wanted it so that farmers could better "contribute to the European Green Agreement".
The EU should in the future give farmers 10% more than what they had obtained in 2018, he said.
He also criticized the easing of EU state aid, saying it will widen the gap between rich and poor in Europe.
The European Commission has declared that farmers can get up to € 100,000 from each of their national governments to overcome the slowdown of the virus and that agricultural businesses can get up to € 800,000.
But not all governments could pay that much, and that meant a "drastic widening of the development gap" in Europe, said Morawiecki.
His ideas come in the midst of a wider discord over the EU budget and pandemic stimulus plans, the wealthy in the North being wary of paying for southern Europe, who has a wasteful balance sheet.
Poland has recently aligned itself with an EU court ruling to suspend its latest set of laws to silence the judiciary.
But despite this, Poland's authority in the Council of the EU, where member states meet to make decisions, has deteriorated in recent years.
"Tell me one thing, one thing, that Poland has accomplished at European level since this government came to power," said Radek Sikorski, Polish MEP and former Foreign Minister to the EU Observer recently in a statement. interview.
Poland was becoming a more and more "closed" one-party state to the EU and the rest of the world, said Igor Tuleya, a Polish judge critical of the government, who is at risk of go to jail for his opinions. .