Why Are French Farmers Unhappy?

In his latest New York Times column Tom Friedman worries about the fate of the European Union:

On Nov. 24, The Guardian published an illuminating collection of voices from Yellow Vest protesters in Paris that told their stories. There was Florence, 55, who worked for an airfreight company outside Paris, who said of Macron, “When he appears on television we have the impression he is uncomfortable with normal people, that there is a certain contempt for us.”

There was Bruno Binelli, 66, a retired carpenter from Lyon, reacting to Macron’s raising the taxes on diesel to combat climate change, leading to fuel costs that hit people in the countryside particularly hard because they have only cars to get around: “I have a little diesel van and I don’t have the money to buy a new one, especially as I’m about to retire. We have the feeling those from the countryside are forgotten.”

And there was Marie Lemoine, 62, a schoolteacher from Provins, who said she was neither “right or left,” explaining: “ I’m here for my children and grandchildren and all those people left crying by the 15th of the month because they’ve gone into the red. … Macron is our Louis XVI, and we know what happened to him. He ended up at the guillotine.”

It is going to take extraordinary leadership for the U.S., Britain and the E.U. to come up with a strategy for these grievances.

It has to balance the need for economic growth and redistribution, the need to take care of those who have been left behind without burdening future generations, the need for free-flowing borders to attract new talent and ideas, and the need to prevent people from feeling like strangers in their own homes.

But that leadership is not present. I get why a slim majority of U.K. citizens voted for Brexit — as it was sold to them. They were told they could curb all the stuff they didn’t like — such as a flood of 2.2 million foreign E.U. workers — and still keep all the stuff they liked — mainly Britain’s free access to the E.U. market — and give up nothing. But it was all a lie.

Let me fill in a little background. Through what’s called the Common Agricultural Policy French and other farmers receive a subsidy from the EU. Indeed, the entire pretext for the Eu has always been to subsidize French farmers and give German manufacturers larger markets. That’s how the cats were herded.

The graph at the top of the page illustrates the subsidies minus taxes by country. The CAP subsidizes have been flat for decades. The recent increases in taxes in France in particular were the difference between continuing to receive a net subsidy and no effective subsidy. Add that expansion into Eastern Europe left France with a lot more competition from within the EU. For years I’ve been saying that I didn’t understand how French farmers were going to survive admitting Romania to the EU. Nearly 30% of the Romanian labor force are farmers and Romanian exports have been growing sharply.

Mr. Friedman is right to worry. Unless the Germans are willing to increase the subsidies, and let’s face it, the German tail is wagging the European dog, the rural French population will be increasingly unhappy with the present arrangement. The entire thing was a house of cards but it’s been that way from the beginning.