Polish farmers blocked roads with tractors and flares on Wednesday in escalating protests against EU environmental regulations and cheap food imports from neighboring Ukraine which the bloc provisionally agreed to prolong.
Placards depicted a farmer swinging from a gallows next to wind farms and an EU-emblazoned executioner with the words: “Green Deal equals the death of Polish agriculture”, referring to the bloc’s plan to tackle climate change.
Farmers in Poland and elsewhere in the bloc have been protesting in recent months, opening new tab to demand the re-imposition of customs duties on agricultural imports from Ukraine that were waived after Russia’s invasion in 2022.
They say Ukraine’s farmers are flooding Europe with cheap imports that leave them unable to compete.
With hundreds of protests planned, from Zakret, east of Warsaw, showed farmers blocking ways into the capital. Tractors lined roads mounted with Polish flags while red flares were set off.
“We demand the withdrawal of the ‘Green Deal’ as a whole, we demand the withdrawal of the ‘Fit for 55’ (EU climate plan), the limits on all emissions, all the bans, and orders,” said protest organiser Lukasz Komorowski, speaking to fellow rallying farmers at the Zakret blockade.
Farmers in the Czech Republic held similar protests.
They drove an estimated 1,600 tractors and other agricultural machinery onto the streets, Barbora Pankova, a spokesperson for the Czech Agrarian Chamber.
