LONDON — Choosing your Brexit camp was once the preserve of Britain’s Tories. Now Labour is joining in the fun.  Six years after Britain left the EU, a host of loose — and mostly overlapping — groupings in the U.K.’s ruling party are thinking about precisely how close to try to get to the bloc. They range from customs union enthusiasts to outright skeptics — with plenty of shades of grey in between. There’s a political urgency to all of this too: with Prime Minister Keir Starmer tanking in the polls, the Europhile streak among many Labour MPs and members means Brexit could become a key issue for anyone who would seek to replace him. “The more the screws and pressure have been on Keir around leadership, the more we’ve seen that play to the base,” said one Labour MP, granted anonymity like others quoted in this piece to speak frankly. Indeed, Starmer started the new year explicitly talking up closer alignment with the European Union’s single market. At face value, nothing has changed: Starmer’s comments reflect his existing policy of a “reset” with Brussels. His manifesto red lines on not rejoining the customs union or single market remain. Most of his MPs care more about aligning than how to get there. In short, this is not like the Tory wars of the late 2010s. Well, not yet. POLITICO sketches out Labour’s nascent Brexit tribes. THE CUSTOMS UNIONISTS  It all started with a Christmas walk. Health Secretary Wes Streeting told an interviewer he desires a “deeper trading relationship” with the EU — widely interpreted as hinting at joining a customs union. This had been a whispered topic in Labour circles for a while, discussed privately by figures including Starmer’s economic adviser Minouche Shafik. Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy said last month that rejoining a customs union is not “currently” government policy — which some took as a hint that the position could shift. But Streeting’s leadership ambitions (he denies plotting for the top job) and his willingness to describe Brexit as a problem gave his comments an elevated status among Labour Europhiles.  “This has really come from Wes’s leadership camp,” said one person who talks regularly to No. 10 Downing Street. Naomi Smith, CEO of the pro-EU pressure group Best for Britain, added any Labour leadership contest will be dominated by the Brexit question. MPs and members who would vote in a race “are even further ahead than the public average on all of those issues relating to Europe,” she argued. Joining a customs union would in theory allow smoother trade without returning to free movement of people. But Labour critics of a customs union policy — including Starmer himself — argue it is a non-starter because it would mean tearing up post-Brexit agreements with other countries such as India and the U.S. “It’s just absolutely nonsense,” said a second Labour MP.    Keir Starmer has argued that the customs union route would mean hard conversations with workers in the car industry after Britain secured a U.K.-U.S. tariff deal last summer. | Colin McPherson/Getty Images And since Streeting denies plotting and did not even mention a customs union by name, the identities of the players pushing for one are understandably murky beyond the 13 Labour MPs who backed a Liberal Democrat bill last month requiring the government to begin negotiations on joining a bespoke customs union with the EU. One senior Labour official said “hardly any” MPs back it, while a minister said there was no organized group, only a vague idea. “There are people who don’t really know what it is, but realize Brexit has been painful and the economy needs a stimulus,” they said. “And there are people who do know what this means and they effectively want to rejoin. For people who know about trade, this is an absolute non-starter.” Anand Menon, director of the UK in a Changing Europe think tank, said a full rejoining of the EU customs union would mean negotiating round a suite of “add-ons” — and no nations have secured this without also being in the EU single market. (Turkey has a customs union with the EU, but does not benefit from the EU’s wider trade agreements.) “I’m not convinced the customs union works without the single market,” Menon added.  Starmer has argued that the customs union route would mean hard conversations with workers in the car industry after Britain secured a U.K.-U.S. tariff deal last summer, a person with knowledge of his thinking said. “When you read anything from any economically literate commentator, the customs union is not their go-to,” added the senior Labour official quoted above. “Keir is really strong on it. He fully believes it isn’t a viable route in the national interest or economic interest.” THE SINGLE MARKETEERS (A.K.A. THE GOVERNMENT) Starmer and his allies, then, want to park the customs union and get closer to the single market.  Paymaster General Nick Thomas-Symonds has long led negotiations along these lines through Labour’s existing EU “reset.” He and Starmer recently discussed post-Brexit policy on a walk through the grounds of the PM’s country retreat, Chequers. Working on the detail with Thomas-Symonds is Michael Ellam, the former director of communications for ex-PM Gordon Brown, now a senior civil servant in the Cabinet Office. Ellam is “a really highly regarded, serious guy” and attends regular meetings with Brussels officials, said a second person who speaks regularly to No. 10.   A bill is due to be introduced to the U.K. parliament by summer which will allow “dynamic” alignment with new EU laws in areas of agreement. Two people with knowledge of his role said the bill will be steered through parliament by Cabinet Office Minister Chris Ward, Starmer’s former aide and close ally, who was by his side when Starmer was shadow Brexit secretary during the “Brexit wars” of the late 2010s. Starmer himself talked up this approach in a rare long-form interview this week with BBC host Laura Kuenssberg, saying: “We are better looking to the single market rather than the customs union for our further alignment.” While the PM’s allies insist he simply answered a question, some of his MPs spy a need to seize back the pro-EU narrative. The second person who talks regularly to No. 10 argued a “relatively small … factional leadership challenge group around Wes” is pushing ideas around a customs union, while Starmer wants to “not match that but bypass it, and say actually, we’re doing something more practical and potentially bigger.”  A third Labour MP was blunter about No. 10’s messaging: “They’re terrified and they’re worrying about an internal leadership challenge.” Starmer’s allies argue that their approach is pragmatic and recognizes what the EU will actually be willing to accept. Christabel Cooper, director of research at the pro-Labour think tank Labour Together — which plans polling and focus groups in the coming months to test public opinion on the issue — said: “We’ve talked to a few trade experts and economists, and actually the customs union is not all that helpful. To get a bigger bang for your buck, you do need to go down more of a single market alignment route.”  Stella Creasy argued that promising a Swiss-style deal in Labour’s next election manifesto (likely in 2029) would benefit the economy — far more than the “reset” currently on the table. | Nicola Tree/Getty Images Nick Harvey, CEO of the pro-EU pressure group European Movement UK, concurred: “The fact that they’re now talking about a fuller alignment towards the single market is very good news, and shows that to make progress economically and to make progress politically, they simply have to do this.”  But critics point out there are still big questions about what alignment will look like — or more importantly, what the EU will go for.  The bill will include areas such as food standards, animal welfare, pesticide use, the EU’s electricity market and carbon emissions trading, but talks on all of these remain ongoing. Negotiations to join the EU’s defense framework, SAFE, stalled over the costs to Britain. Menon said: “I just don’t see what [Starmer] is spelling out being practically possible. Even at the highest levels there has been, under the Labour Party, quite a degree of ignorance, I think, about how the EU works and what the EU wants.   “I’ve heard Labour MPs say, well, they’ve got a veterinary deal with New Zealand, so how hard can it be? And you want to say, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but New Zealand doesn’t have a land border with the EU.”  THE SWISS BANKERS Then there are Europhile MPs, peers and campaigners who back aligning with the single market — but going much further than Starmer.  For some this takes the form of a “Swiss-style” deal, which would allow single market access for some sectors without rejoining the customs union.   This would plough through Starmer’s red lines by reintroducing EU freedom of movement, along with substantial payments to Brussels.  But Stella Creasy, chair of the Labour Movement for Europe (LME), argued that promising a Swiss-style deal in Labour’s next election manifesto (likely in 2029) would benefit the economy — far more than the “reset” currently on the table. She said: “If you could get a Swiss-style deal and put it in the manifesto … that would be enough for businesses to invest.”  Creasy said LME has around 150 MPs as members and holds regular briefings for them. While few Labour MPs back a Swiss deal — and various colleagues see Creasy as an outlier — she said MPs and peers, including herself, plan to put forward amendments to the dynamic alignment bill when it goes through parliament.  Tom Baldwin, Starmer’s biographer and the former communications director of the People’s Vote campaign (which called for a second referendum on Brexit), also suggests Labour could go further in 2029. “Keir Starmer’s comments at the weekend about aligning with — and gaining access to — the single market open up a whole range of possibilities,” he said. “At the low end, this is a pragmatic choice by a PM who doesn’t want to be forced to choose between Europe and America.   “At the upper end, it suggests Labour may seek a second term mandate at the next election by which the U.K. would get very close to rejoining the single market. That would be worth a lot more in terms of economic growth and national prosperity than the customs union deal favoured by the Lib Dems.”  A third person who speaks regularly to No. 10 called it a “boil the frog strategy.” They added: “You get closer and closer and then maybe … you go into the election saying ‘we’ll try to negotiate something more single markety or customs uniony.’”  THE REJOINERS? Labour’s political enemies (and some of its supporters) argue this could all lead even further — to rejoining the EU one day. “Genuinely, I am not advocating rejoin now in any sense because it’s a 10-year process,” said Creasy, who is about as Europhile as they come in Labour. “Our European counterparts would say ‘hang on a minute, could you actually win a referendum, given [Reform UK Leader and Brexiteer Nigel] Farage is doing so well?’”  With Prime Minister Keir Starmer tanking in the polls, the Europhile streak among many Labour MPs and members means Brexit could become a key issue for anyone who would seek to replace him. | Tom Nicholson/Getty Images Simon Opher, an MP and member of the Mainstream Labour group closely aligned with Burnham, said rejoining was “probably for a future generation” as “the difficulty is, would they want us back?” But look into the soul of many Labour politicians, and they would love to still be in the bloc — even if they insist rejoining is not on the table now. Andy Burnham — the Greater Manchester mayor who has flirted with the leadership — remarked last year that he would like to rejoin the EU in his lifetime (he’s 56). London Mayor Sadiq Khan said “in the medium to long term, yes, of course, I would like to see us rejoining.” In the meantime Khan backs membership of the single market and customs union, which would still go far beyond No. 10’s red lines.  THE ISSUES-LED MPS Then there are the disparate — yet overlapping — groups of MPs whose views on Europe are guided by their politics, their constituencies or their professional interests. To Starmer’s left, backbench rebels including Richard Burgon and Dawn Butler backed the push toward a customs union by the opposition Lib Dems. The members of the left-wing Socialist Campaign Group frame their argument around fears Labour will lose voters to other progressive parties, namely the Lib Dems, Greens and SNP, if they fail to show adequate bonds with Europe. Some other, more centrist MPs fear similar. Labour MPs with a military background or in military-heavy seats also want the U.K. and EU to cooperate further. London MP Calvin Bailey, who spent more than two decades in the Royal Air Force, endorsed closer security relations between Britain and France through greater intelligence sharing and possibly permanent infrastructure. Alex Baker, whose Aldershot constituency is known as the home of the British Army, backed British involvement in a global Defense, Security and Resilience Bank, arguing it could be key to a U.K.-EU Defence and Security Pact. The government opted against joining such a scheme.   Parliamentarians keen for young people to bag more traveling rights were buoyed by a breakthrough on Erasmus+ membership for British students at the end of last year. More than 60 Labour MPs earlier signed a letter calling for a youth mobility scheme allowing 18 to 30-year-olds expanded travel opportunities on time limited visas. It was organized by Andrew Lewin, the Welywn Hatfield MP, and signatories included future Home Office Minister Mike Tapp (then a backbencher).  Labour also has an influential group of rural MPs, most elected in 2024, who are keen to boost cooperation and cut red tape for farmers. Rural MP Steve Witherden, on the party’s left, said: “Three quarters of Welsh food and drink exports go straight to the EU … regulatory alignment is a top priority for rural Labour MPs. Success here could point the way towards closer ties with Europe in other sectors.”  THE NOT-SO-SECRET EUROPHILES (A.K.A. ALL OF THE ABOVE) Many Labour figures argue that all of the above are actually just one mega-group — Labour MPs who want to be closer to Brussels, regardless of the mechanism. Menon agreed Labour camps are not formalized because most Labour MPs agree on working closely with Brussels. “I think it’s a mishmash,” he said. But he added: “I think these tribes will emerge or develop because there’s an intra-party fight looming, and Brexit is one of the issues people use to signal where they stand.” A fourth Labour MP agreed: “I didn’t think there was much of a distinction between the camps of people who want to get closer to the EU. The first I heard of that was over the weekend.”  The senior Labour official quoted above added: “I don’t think it cuts across tribes in such a clear way … a broader group of people just want us to move faster in terms of closeness into the EU, in terms of a whole load of things. I don’t think it fits neatly.” For years MPs were bound by a strategy of talking little about Brexit because it was so divisive with Labour’s voter base. That shifted over 2025. Labour advisers were buoyed by polls showing a rise in “Bregret” among some who voted for Brexit in 2016, as well as changing demographics (bluntly, young voters come of age while older voters die).  No. 10 aides also noted last summer that Farage, the leader of the right-wing populist party Reform UK, was making Brexit less central to his campaigning. Some aides (though others dispute this) credit individual advisers such as Tim Allan, No. 10’s director of communications, as helping a more openly EU-friendly media strategy into being. For all the talk of tribes and camps, Labour doesn’t have warring Brexit factions in the same way that the Tories did at the height of the EU divorce in the 2010s. | Jakub Porzycki/Getty Images THE BLUE LABOUR HOLDOUTS  Not everyone in Labour wants to hug Brussels tight.  A small but significant rump of Labour MPs, largely from the socially conservative Blue Labour tribe, is anxious that pursuing closer ties could be seen as a rejection of the Brexit referendum — and a betrayal of voters in Leave-backing seats who are looking to Reform. One of them, Liverpool MP Dan Carden, said the failure of both London and Brussels to strike a recent deal on defense funding, even amid threats from Russia, showed Brussels is not serious.   “Any Labour MP who thinks that the U.K. can get closer to the single market or the customs union without giving up freedoms and taking instruction from an EU that we’re not a part of is living in cloud cuckoo land,” he said. A similar skepticism of the EU’s authority is echoed by the Tony Blair Institute (TBI), led by one of the most pro-European prime ministers in Britain’s history. The TBI has been meeting politicians in Brussels and published a paper translated into French, German and Italian in a bid to shape the EU’s future from within.   Ryan Wain, the TBI’s senior director for policy and politics, argued: “We live in a G2 world where there are two superpowers, China and the U.S. By the middle of this century there will likely be three, with India. To me, it’s just abysmal that Europe isn’t mentioned in that at all. It has massive potential to adapt and reclaim its influence, but that opportunity needs to be unlocked.”  Such holdouts enjoy a strange alliance with left-wing Euroskeptics (“Lexiteers”), who believe the EU does not have the interests of workers at its heart. But few of these were ever in Labour and few remain; former Leader Jeremy Corbyn has long since been cast out. At the same time many Labour MPs in Leave-voting areas, who opposed efforts to stop Brexit in the late 2010s, now support closer alignment with Brussels to help their local car and chemical industries. As such, there are now 20 or fewer MPs holding their noses on closer alignment. Just three Labour MPs, including fellow Blue Labour supporter Jonathan Brash, voted against a bill supporting a customs union proposed by the centrist, pro-Europe Lib Dems last month.  WHERE WILL IT ALL END?  For all the talk of tribes and camps, Labour doesn’t have warring Brexit factions in the same way that the Tories did at the height of the EU divorce in the 2010s. Most MPs agree on closer alignment with the EU; the question is how they get there.  Even so, Menon has a warning from the last Brexit wars. Back in the late 2010s, Conservative MPs would jostle to set out their positions — workable or otherwise. The crowded field just made negotiations with Brussels harder. “We end up with absolutely batshit stupid positions when viewed from the EU,” said Menon, “because they’re being derived as a function of the need to position yourself in a British political party.” But few of these were ever in Labour and few remain; former Leader Jeremy Corbyn has long since been cast out. | Seiya Tanase/Getty Images The saving grace could be that most Labour MPs are united by a deeper gut feeling about the EU — one that, Baldwin argues, is reflected in Starmer himself. The PM’s biographer said: “At heart, Keir Starmer is an outward-looking internationalist whose pro-European beliefs are derived from what he calls the ‘blood-bond’ of 1945 and shared values, rather than the more transactional trade benefits of 1973,” when Britain joined the European Economic Community.  All that remains is to turn a “blood-bond” into hard policy. Simple, right?

LONDON — The government is preparing a bill that will give overarching powers to allow the U.K. to align with the EU over a wide suite of areas to give legal shape to their “reset” deal with the bloc. One U.K. official said a bill is due to be introduced to parliament this spring or summer, establishing a legal framework for U.K.-EU alignment. These potential areas include food standards, animal welfare, pesticide use, the EU’s electricity market and carbon emissions trading, according to the official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about the plans. The bill would create a new framework for the U.K. government and devolved administrations to adopt new EU laws when they are passed in Brussels. It raises the prospect that new EU laws in agreed areas will effectively transfer to the U.K. statute book automatically, with Britain retaining the power to veto them in specific cases. U.K. officials stress that the exact form the powers will take has not yet been decided. The U.K. is currently negotiating a Brexit “reset” agreement with the bloc, including an agrifood deal, plans to link its emissions trading system with the EU’s and reintegrating electricity markets. Britain is still seeking carve-outs as part of these deals, the official said, making it too early to say exactly where alignment will happen and what it will look like. News of the scope of the bill comes after EU Relations Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds said in August last year that parliament would “rightly have a say” on alignment with new EU rules in a speech delivered to The Spectator. He has insisted that the U.K. will still “have decision-shaping rights when new EU policies are made.” The U.K. government has been approached for comment.

Dr. Ursula von der Leyen has never had a patient quite like the Green Deal — and the treatment she’s prescribing for the viral politics infecting her landmark policy is amputation.  Europe’s green agenda is under attack from a motley coalition of corporate lobbyists, far-right rabble rousers and von der Leyen’s own political family, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP). Von der Leyen, the top EU executive and a medical doctor before she entered politics, is adamant she wants to save the patient, even if that means removing some of its minor limbs. After all, von der Leyen considers the Green Deal one of her signal political achievements.  “We’re standing firm by the European Green Deal. Climate change won’t go away,” said European Commission Chief Spokesperson Paula Pinho. Launched at the beginning of her first term as European Commission president in 2019, the Green Deal promised to completely overhaul the EU economy — slashing climate-warming pollution to zero, reshaping agriculture, transport and energy, and bringing industry, corporations and citizens into harmony with nature. But last year’s EU election delivered an alternative right-wing majority in the European Parliament — in addition to the centrist one that backed von der Leyen’s second term. EPP President Manfred Weber has since been using that right-leaning majority to target green legislation.  In response, von der Leyen has supported looser rules on car emissions, stripped-down corporate regulations and redirected green funds — to name a few items. But thus far, the Green Deal’s core — a net-zero drive for 2050 and the laws to deliver it — has not changed. And that’s von der Leyen’s strategy.  “We’re standing firm by the European Green Deal. Climate change won’t go away,” said European Commission Chief Spokesperson Paula Pinho. | Oliver Matthys/EPA “We’re in a very different place than we were at the beginning of the first mandate” in 2019, said a Commission official who is familiar with von der Leyen’s thinking and was granted anonymity to protect their relationship. “[The president] remains committed to the Green Deal, it just now has to incorporate some of these changed realities.” SLIMMING DOWN In 2020, von der Leyen said the Green Deal was about “much more than cutting emissions.” Yet EU officials and von der Leyen’s advisers now say her vision has shifted away from an all-encompassing drive for sustainability on every level.  While some of those broader goals remain, the emphasis is now on preserving what von der Leyen views as the core of the Green Deal: its climate change laws and the EU’s efforts to stamp out its greenhouse gas pollution by 2050. This is closer to what Weber is prepared to accept as well. That shift has guided von der Leyen in making compromises on a flock of environmental rules — often under the guise of easing the bureaucratic burden on companies. “Simplification is in the interest of the European Green Deal. If it gets too complex, it won’t be done,” Pinho said. The Commission has binned requirements for companies to report on their environmental impacts and exposure to climate risks. It has watered down a ban on the sale of combustion engine vehicles by 2035. It has killed a law controlling pesticides. The list could go on. Meanwhile, the prospect of an attempt to regulate carbon pollution from agriculture — a major emitter — has faded. Frustration has been mounting among those political groups that want to preserve a full-bodied vision of the Green Deal. They argue that the climate, nature and corporate responsibility drives are all interlinked, and that companies and citizens need to be given a clear sense of direction.  Meanwhile, the impacts of spiraling declines in biodiversity, natural habitats and the stability of the climate grow worse by the day. It has watered down a ban on the sale of combustion engine vehicles by 2035. | Filip Singer/EPA “All this demonization of the climate policies … creates a lot of uncertainty,” said Vula Tsetsi, co-chair of the European Green Party. It is von der Leyen’s role, she said, “to defend what for her has been so important in the previous legislation, meaning the Green Deal. And she should not give up.” Last Friday, von der Leyen seemed to make her most dramatic concession yet to Weber’s demands. After the EPP and far-right groups pushed the Commission to ditch an anti-greenwashing measure, the EU executive seemed to indicate it would withdraw the bill. An enormous row ensued. Centrist and center-left parties accused von der Leyen of being subservient to Weber and the far right’s anti-green agenda.  “VDL needs to get EPP in line,” said Socialist European Parliament member Tiemo Wölken, who worked on the law, using the Brussels nickname for von der Leyen. The European Parliament’s biggest group is trying to “kill everything related to the sustainability agenda,” he added. But in a twist, it turned out the Commission hadn’t meant it, or misspoke — it wasn’t clear.  And von der Leyen’s position, as POLITICO reported on Tuesday, is that she stands by the proposal, as long as the greenwashing rules don’t apply to the smallest companies. But even as that conflict rumbles on, a new, direct attack on the Green Deal’s core climate mission is gathering steam.  Next week the Commission is to present its 2040 climate target, but a coalition of countries led by France is pushing to stop the goal from affecting more near-term climate efforts. That could further delay EU attempts to establish a critical milestone, which is already far behind schedule — and weaken other climate efforts in the process.  The EPP also has its grumbles about the 2040 target, seeking more flexibility on how countries can reach their goals. The Commission is listening. According to a draft of the EU executive’s 2040 proposal, countries will be allowed to outsource some emissions cuts to poorer nations. Notably, however, von der Leyen’s preferred 90 percent emissions-cut target remains — another concession made to save the overall goal. What will von der Leyen do if the virus enters the body? Leeches? Or euthanasia? Louise Guillot contributed reporting from Brussels.

LONDON — Keir Starmer hailed a “landmark deal” with the European Union back in May which he promised would slash red tape. One month on, however, and Starmer’s promises still seem like a distant dream in Northern Ireland, as businesses brace for yet more Brexit paperwork. From July 1, a whole raft of new food products sold in Northern Ireland will have to carry “Not for EU” labels as part of the third and final phase of a controversial labeling rollout. The rules — set out in the Windsor Framework deal between the U.K. and EU — are supposed to ensure that goods are not moved onward from Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland, an EU member country. But in light of the U.K. prime minister’s fresh EU deal, businesses are questioning why the new labels should be introduced at all. Under the terms of the deal agreed by Starmer, Britain is preparing to sign up to European single-market regulation on animal and plant health, known as sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) rules, removing the need for the labeling. “We are being required to implement a very cumbersome and onerous regulation from July 1 until the date that the [SPS] deal is put into law, which may only be a matter of months,” said Roger Pollen, head of the Federation of Small Businesses in Northern Ireland.  “There will almost certainly be manufacturers who will say: ‘No, we’re not doing that’, and stop supplying the market, leading to gaps on shelves and broken supply chains, simply because the EU are sticking on a point of principle despite the imminent SPS deal.” ‘FRANKLY FARCICAL’ The labels are deeply controversial for businesses, who claim they are not only off-putting to consumers but costly for manufacturers and “cataclysmic” for food exports.  The latest rollout will cover some fruit and vegetables, fish, and composite products such as pizzas and quiches. Meat and dairy products sold in Northern Ireland already carry the labels. The requirement was originally supposed to apply U.K.-wide, but that plan was scrapped last year following a huge backlash from businesses — with the caveat that they could be reimposed if supplies to Northern Ireland are detrimentally affected.  A senior retail figure, granted anonymity to speak freely, said industry was “furious at the government’s failure to stand up to the EU and demand that retailers be treated as trusted traders. If the U.K. and EU have agreed to align on SPS standards, then it is frankly farcical to proceed with phase-three labeling.” Meat and dairy products sold in Northern Ireland already carry the labels. | Janos Vajda/EPA A spokesperson for the Cabinet Office, tasked with the implementation of the Windsor Framework, acknowledged that the need for the labels would likely be “diminished” as a result of any SPS agreement. “In the meantime,” they said, “it is important to implement the existing arrangements for the Windsor Framework and we will continue to work closely with businesses across the United Kingdom to support them in implementing these arrangements.” That message was hammered home at a recent meeting of the Specialised Committee on the Implementation of the Windsor Framework — co-chaired by the U.K. government and the European Commission — where both sides reiterated their commitment to the “full, timely and faithful implementation of the Windsor Framework,” including the “correct implementation of the labelling safeguards.”  A Commission spokesperson said suspending the implementation of the Windsor Framework until an SPS agreement is reached “creates risks for the integrity of the EU internal market, which the EU does not accept. It is important to recall that the EU and the U.K. currently have different SPS rules. “Honouring existing agreements is a question of good faith, this is why the EU and the U.K. both committed to the full, timely and faithful implementation of existing international agreements between them,” they added. ‘EU HAS SHOWN NO COMPROMISE’ But the lack of flexibility has left industry disappointed — and in some cases blaming the EU.   “The EU has shown no compromise and insisted on ‘full and faithful’ implementation of the rules despite agreeing to probably remove them in the near future,” the retail figure said. “The government’s failure to resist this unreasonable behavior is extremely disappointing and U.K. consumers will end up bearing the costs [with] increased prices.” Pollen agreed. “The only people who can actually step in and be magnanimous about this are the EU and they’ve resolutely refused to do that so far.  “I think they should just be pragmatic and say: Look, we’ve reached this overarching agreement on SPS with the U.K. On that basis we are not going to require businesses supplying Northern Ireland to have to go ahead with phase-three labeling for a grace period of a year to 18 months. “Then, if the deal is ‘papered up’ in law by that stage, this bureaucratic labeling won’t be required at all.”  But a figure close to discussions about the future of the scheme — granted anonymity to speak freely — called for realistic expectations of when an SPS deal was likely to happen. “First of all, the U.K. needs to align itself to EU standards, where it has diverged,” they said. For example, the U.K. has authorized emergency use of certain pesticides that are banned in the EU. Some suppliers may decide to drop out of the Northern Ireland market altogether. | Mark Marlow/EPA “Then, on the EU side, the Commission will not have their mandate to get into technical discussions from the European Council until at least mid-Autumn and the European Parliament will want some sort of input into the technical process.  “Either way, those things aren’t going to happen overnight, and while relationships from the political agreement are still buoyant, the technical discussion will be much more intense and fervent.” ‘THROUGH-THE-LOOKING-GLASS POLICY’ Despite industry’s concerns, retailers are generally “well prepared — especially when it comes to own-brand products,” the same senior retail figure quoted earlier said. But they added that there are still a “considerable number of suppliers, including sizable brands who are not ready, and who don’t want to play ball.” While some suppliers may decide to drop out of the Northern Ireland market altogether, others are getting round the issue by bringing unlabeled goods through the “red lane,” a customs channel for goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain that are intended to move into the EU, where they face full EU customs checks. The absurdity isn’t lost on Pollen. “They [businesses] are prepared to go through that added bureaucracy just to ease a different type of bureaucracy. It’s through-the-looking-glass policy.” With the U.K. and EU unlikely to budge on labeling any time soon, Rod Addy, director general of the Provision Trade Federation, which represents food processing, manufacturing and trading companies, is pinning his hopes on a swift SPS deal.    “Our view would be that the government and industry need to quickly identify the most important sticking points and come up with quick fixes so the deal can be pushed through relatively quickly and business and government can enjoy the benefits in months, not years,” he said. 

PARIS — French farmers are protesting again. Agricultural workers parked their tractors in front of France’s National Assembly and organized road blocks across the country for demonstrations in support of legislation which would make it easier to obtain administrative authorization to build breeding facilities and allow the temporary use of acetamiprid, an insecticide that has been banned in France since 2018. Both proposals are the type of red-tape-slashing measures farmers sought when they organized large-scale protests last year. The bill is set to be discussed in the National Assembly on Monday, but its backers said green and left-wing parties tried to obstruct proceedings by proposing hundreds of amendments to the text before the debate. The proposed law was approved by the French Senate in January and is backed by Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard. The new wave of protests was organized by influential farming lobbies FNSEA and Jeunes Agriculteurs, though one left-wing farmer’s union opposes it. FNSEA chief Arnaud Rousseau on Monday said protests will continue until Wednesday but acknowledged that they will be mostly symbolic. “The aim is not to annoy the French, but to bring the message we put across a year and a half ago, which is that French agriculture is in danger,” Rousseau said in an interview with FranceInfo. However, France’s left-wing opposition parties, in particular France Unbowed and the Greens, worry that the French government and the European Union are going too far in targeting measures meant to protect the environment, including on the use of pesticides, in the wake of last year’s massive demonstrations. European Union agriculture ministers are gathering in Brussels on Monday to discuss the bloc’s Common Agriculture Policy as well as trade with Ukraine and the United States. More radical farmers organizations are expected to take to the streets in Brussels next week in opposition to the bloc’s green rules.

YELLOW HAT REVOLT: INSIDE FRANCE’S RURAL RISING With rural discontent growing, Marine Le Pen’s far-right party sees an opportunity ahead of the 2027 presidential election. By MARION SOLLETY in AUCH, France Photo-illustration by Andrei Cojocaru for POLITICO Standing on the stage, Serge Bousquet-Cassagne looked down solemnly at his protégé, pointing his arm at him for all the farmers and their families to see. “I make you general of the army of the serfs,” the 65-year-old leader said in a makeshift ceremony organized to honor regional leader Lionel Candelon, who stood before him in a large concrete hall on the outskirts of Auch, southwestern France. Hundreds had gathered to celebrate a landmark victory for their movement: the Coordination rurale union, known for its signature yellow hats, had made unprecedented gains in February’s farming union elections, breaking the hegemony of the establishment FNSEA in representing farmers in France and Brussels. Bousquet-Cassagne’s grand gesture — elevating Candelon to general — was both a nod to his military background and suited the farming union’s muscular style. Advertisement The movement has been at the forefront of recent farmers’ protests in France, outflanking the FNSEA with hard-hitting action, ranging from confrontations with President Emmanuel Macron to setting manure on fire in front of government buildings, drawing criticism for what rivals say are intimidation tactics. That evening however, the crowd was in a cheery mood, celebrating past coups d’éclat and triumphs yet to come at long banquet tables decked out with yellow paper napkins and soon laid with roasted duck breast and red wine. DEEP SOUTH The movement was born 40 kilometers from Auch, in the heart of Gascony, a land of soft hills and green pastures just to the north of the Spanish border that is famed for its foie gras, Armagnac brandy — and strong headed people. Bousquet-Cassagne has made a trademark of his bullish manners and disregard for the law, boasting 17 court appearances over the years for actions ranging from vandalizing supermarkets to illegally constructing water basins used for irrigation. Serge Bousquet-Cassagne is one of the union’s figures most closely associated with the French political far right. | Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images “In this country if you don’t burn cars you don’t get acknowledged,” he said at the rally. “And you get fucked.” Bousquet-Cassagne is also one of the union’s figures most closely associated with the French political far right, having called National Rally President Jordan Bardella “their last hope.” His outspoken support for the party, along with that of other Coordination rurale figures, has fueled speculation about the union’s symbiotic relationship with Marine Le Pen’s party as large chunks of the French countryside have swung to the far right over the last couple of years. France’s rural heartlands have been a big reservoir for growth for the National Rally over the past couple of years. After winning over disaffected industrial areas, the party has sought to capitalize on rural discontent and hardship, blaming mainstream parties for failed farming policies and accusing Brussels of exposing EU markets to cheaper and inferior foreign produce. Support for nationalist parties is especially high among the ranks of the yellow hats: Sixty-two percent of them expressed support for the National Rally or the more extreme Reconquête in a poll conducted ahead of last June’s European election by research institutes Cevipof and INP Ensat. That compared with 31 percent of supporters of the FNSEA — the National Federation of Agricultural Holders’ Unions — slightly below the far right’s actual vote share of the voting public. While not everyone in the movement approves of Bousquet-Cassagne’s style and outspoken support for the far right, most see him as a strong leader and a role model. As he sipped his drink and greeted union members in Auch, Bousquet-Cassagne constantly interrupted himself to greet supporters, calling them “thugs!” and “terrorists!” in jest. Many approached for advice, especially on building water basins for irrigation, as access to water has become a huge point of contention with environmentalists and local authorities as the weather grows drier and hotter in the region due to climate change. Advertisement “When you’ll have built one the rest will follow,” he told one of them, “even if jail time is what it takes.” Other yellow hat leaders have been at pains to soften its image in recent months and push back against the idea that the union has ties to the far right. “They are using us, and we are maybe using them too, that’s part of the game” said Coordination rurale Vice-President Sophie Lenaerts. “If we can push our values and our positions… We will do that with everyone. Some are just taking in more than others.” Le Pen has gained support among farmers, a traditionally moderate constituency, and more broadly in rural areas where farming and food issues carry political weight way beyond farmers themselves. Even as the far right struggles to build support in urban areas, the French countryside is shaping up to be a battleground ahead of the 2027 presidential election. The French countryside is shaping up to be a battleground ahead of the 2027 presidential election. | Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images As she crisscrossed Paris’ annual Salon International de L’Agriculture in February, lending a sympathetic ear to farmer’s economic struggles and vowing to support them, visitors greeted Le Pen with cheers, asking for selfies and shouting “Marine Présidente!” as she walked between cow pens to pet the salon’s other star, Oupette, a one-ton brown Limousine heifer. Days before, Bardella also made sure to pay a visit to the Coordination rurale stand in the corner of one of the seven giant halls, a must for politicians this year. ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT PUSH The movement was born in the early 1990s to protest a landmark reform of the EU’s flagship Common Agricultural Policy that introduced direct subsidies for farmers in lieu of guaranteed prices, tying them to environmental protection measures. Long in the shadow of the dominant FNSEA, Coordination rurale seized the initiative during last year’s large-scale farmers’ protests, with tractor convoys rolling into cities to protest against environmental rules, as well as a hike in fuel prices and cheap agricultural imports coming from other European countries, including Ukraine. The union came out on top in 14 of the country’s 101 agricultural chambers in February’s farming elections, up from just three in the last election in 2019, giving it a much more prominent voice in discussions with the government over farming policy, where FNSEA used to be the dominant player. Agriculture chambers also have wide-ranging prerogatives at the local level, ranging from administrative support to farmers to supporting the implementation of farming and environmental policies. While aligned with the FNSEA on some issues, including opposing free trade agreements, the Coordination rurale has taken a more radical stance on others, clashing with environmentalists on water use or reducing the use of pesticides, and slamming what they say is overregulation from the EU and the central government. The union’s leaders have repeatedly framed the FNSEA as part of the establishment, working hand in hand with politicians in Paris and Brussels. Yellow hat candidates have made huge gains in farmlands facing intense economic hardship, including the Bordeaux region, where winemakers who produce for export face another hit from Donald Trump’s trade war. The American president threatened to hike duties on EU exports of wines and spirits to 200 percent if Brussels retaliated against his own duties by hitting U.S. whiskey. Brussels backed down. Advertisement Trump’s trade aggression and competition from countries such as Ukraine were major talking points at the agri fair, with the union’s leaders calling for more protectionist measures. “It’s a dream to hear a head of state saying he wants to protect producers and his citizens,” said Lenaerts, speaking of Trump’s protectionist push ahead of his wine tariffs announcement. “The character in itself doesn’t make me dream … but I like his attitude towards his country.” SURGE IN THE POLLS Support for both the yellow hats union and Marine Le Pen’s party has surged in many parts of rural France, including in Gers, the administrative district to which Auch belongs. The National Rally got 35 percent of the vote in last June’s snap parliamentary election, called by Macron after his liberals were wiped out in the European vote. That was up 15 percentage points from two years ago in a region that used to be a stronghold of the Social Democrats. Beyond the scenic view over limestone farmhouses and villages, there is one extra perk to driving around the countryside here: you won’t get a speeding ticket. The movement was born in the early 1990s to protest a landmark reform of the EU’s flagship Common Agricultural Policy. | Arnaud Finistre/AFP via Getty Images Local yellow hat protesters covered all of the area’s speed cameras with tractor tires and fertilizer bags, a signature move that Candelon boasted about on stage at the union’s gathering, saying he and his supporters had disabled 179 of them. Candelon, a former soldier turned duck farmer and father of three, rose to local fame in 2017 when he mounted protests against what he said was unfair competition from Central European countries, protesting against Bulgarian duck meat imports on local supermarket shelves in front of TV cameras. He quickly rose through the ranks after joining the local Coordination rurale section, and was elected as president of the local agriculture chamber under the union’s banner in February’s farming election. The 38-year-old has also had his share of legal troubles. In 2023, he was fined over online death threats made against local veterinary officials — which Candelon called a one-time slip-up linked to intense pressure after repeated cullings linked to bird flu outbreaks at his farm. He was also questioned by police last year after he and several union members sealed the entrance of the local French Biodiversity Office’s building. The environment agency, in charge of upholding rules on pesticides use and water protection, has been among the union’s recurring targets. The agency denounced the attacks on its agents as “unacceptable” after a member of the Coordination rurale reportedly threatened to torch its vehicles if they set foot on a farm. Sylvie Colas, a spokesperson for the left-leaning union Confederation paysanne and local opponent of Candelon who filed a complaint against him over alleged verbal threats — which he denies — says the union leaders’ “intimidation” tactics have had a chilling effect on locals and public agents alike. “I can’t imagine an agent [from the French Biodiversity Office] making an inspection visit to a farmer in Gers these days,” she said. “It’s Trumpism. There is a constant escalation, to the point where you get the impression that the administration just lies down, says nothing and lets it happen,” she added. Advertisement Candelon says he rejects physical violence, but that punchy actions are necessary to make farmers’ voices heard, standing by the targeting of speeding cameras and other stunts aiming at “emmerder l’État” (pissing off the government). “We know that when we piss off the government, things start moving. So we are going to keep it up.” ‘LEAVE US THE HELL ALONE’ Local farmers praise Candelon’s leadership and visibility, saying it contrasts with the FNSEA’s inability to improve their working conditions over the years. David Palacin, a 47-year-old cattle farmer from the village of Dému, near Auch, says he was never unionized before seeing Candelon in action. A blockade on a local road during last year’s protests was the rallying moment for him and several of his neighbors. Local farmers praise Lionel Candelon’s leadership and visibility. | Valentine Chapuis/AFP via Getty Images “We stayed for 15 days, day and night,” he recalls, with neighbors and family members taking over during the day when farmers had to get some work done in the fields. Palacin says he was unaware of connections with the far right at the top of the movement, which he doesn’t endorse, but that exasperation over the status quo led many to turn to the communication-savvy activists of Coordination rurale. “We’re not being heard,” said Palacin in his office, a stone’s throw away from his farm’s large open air stalls that house some 200 brown Limousine cows. Unlike some of his struggling neighbours, Palacin has built a diversified business employing 15 people, breeding cattle, selling their meat in his two local butcher shops and shipping young males to Spain and Italy. He is acutely aware of upcoming challenges for local farmers, who face competition from neighbouring countries as well as the EU’s trade partners. “Soy from Brazil is getting in, [while] we’ll soon be banned from even using glyphosate,” Palacin said. “At some point you have to be coherent,” pointing at the deal reached between the EU and the Latin American Mercosur trade bloc which French farmers say will open the floodgates to cheaper products that don’t meet the environmental standards that they have to meet. Palacin says French farmers should also be encouraged to compete for mass agricultural markets. Advertisement “Everyone going organic is not going to feed the planet,” he adds, pointing at local opposition to a large-scale poultry farm project in the village of Lannepax. “If we don’t produce it, other countries will, and it will get in.” A short drive down the hill, Grégory Julien, a fellow Coordination rurale member and cereal producer, says top-down environmental rules play a big part in the local farmers’ revolt. “Rules are being imposed on us that make no sense on the ground,” he says, citing periodic bans on hedge trimming meant to protect bird nesting. Opposition to environmentalists and what they say is a government overreach is a regular theme in the union’s slogans, with many of its members standing opposite to green activists in local conflicts around water management. Standing on the stage, Serge Bousquet-Cassagne looked down solemnly at his protégé, pointing his arm at him for all the farmers and their families to see. “I make you general of the army of the serfs,” the 65-year-old leader said in a makeshift ceremony organized to honor regional leader Lionel Candelon, who stood before him in a large concrete hall on the outskirts of Auch, southwestern France. Hundreds had gathered to celebrate a landmark victory for their movement: the Coordination rurale union, known for its signature yellow hats, had made unprecedented gains in February’s farming union elections, breaking the hegemony of the establishment FNSEA in representing farmers in France and Brussels. Bousquet-Cassagne’s grand gesture — elevating Candelon to general — was both a nod to his military background and suited the farming union’s muscular style. The movement has been at the forefront of recent farmers’ protests in France, outflanking the FNSEA with hard-hitting action, ranging from confrontations with President Emmanuel Macron to setting manure on fire in front of government buildings, drawing criticism for what rivals say are intimidation tactics. That evening however, the crowd was in a cheery mood, celebrating past coups d’éclat and triumphs yet to come at long banquet tables decked out with yellow paper napkins and soon laid with roasted duck breast and red wine. DEEP SOUTH The movement was born 40 kilometers from Auch, in the heart of Gascony, a land of soft hills and green pastures just to the north of the Spanish border that is famed for its foie gras, Armagnac brandy — and strong headed people. Advertisement Bousquet-Cassagne has made a trademark of his bullish manners and disregard for the law, boasting 17 court appearances over the years for actions ranging from vandalizing supermarkets to illegally constructing water basins used for irrigation. “In this country if you don’t burn cars you don’t get acknowledged,” he said at the rally. “And you get fucked.” Bousquet-Cassagne is also one of the union’s figures most closely associated with the French political far right, having called National Rally President Jordan Bardella “their last hope.” His outspoken support for the party, along with that of other Coordination rurale figures, has fueled speculation about the union’s symbiotic relationship with Marine Le Pen’s party as large chunks of the French countryside have swung to the far right over the last couple of years. Yellow hat candidates have made huge gains in farmlands facing intense economic hardship. | Miguel Medina/AFP via Getty Images France’s rural heartlands have been a big reservoir for growth for the National Rally over the past couple of years. After winning over disaffected industrial areas, the party has sought to capitalize on rural discontent and hardship, blaming mainstream parties for failed farming policies and accusing Brussels of exposing EU markets to cheaper and inferior foreign produce. Support for nationalist parties is especially high among the ranks of the yellow hats: Sixty-two percent of them expressed support for the National Rally or the more extreme Reconquête in a poll conducted ahead of last June’s European election by research institutes Cevipof and INP Ensat. That compared with 31 percent of supporters of the FNSEA — the National Federation of Agricultural Holders’ Unions — slightly below the far right’s actual vote share of the voting public. While not everyone in the movement approves of Bousquet-Cassagne’s style and outspoken support for the far right, most see him as a strong leader and a role model. As he sipped his drink and greeted union members in Auch, Bousquet-Cassagne constantly interrupted himself to greet supporters, calling them “thugs!” and “terrorists!” in jest. Many approached for advice, especially on building water basins for irrigation, as access to water has become a huge point of contention with environmentalists and local authorities as the weather grows drier and hotter in the region due to climate change. “When you’ll have built one the rest will follow,” he told one of them, “even if jail time is what it takes.” Other yellow hat leaders have been at pains to soften its image in recent months and push back against the idea that the union has ties to the far right. “They are using us, and we are maybe using them too, that’s part of the game” said Coordination rurale Vice-President Sophie Lenaerts. “If we can push our values and our positions… We will do that with everyone. Some are just taking in more than others.” Advertisement Le Pen has gained support among farmers, a traditionally moderate constituency, and more broadly in rural areas where farming and food issues carry political weight way beyond farmers themselves. Even as the far right struggles to build support in urban areas, the French countryside is shaping up to be a battleground ahead of the 2027 presidential election. As she crisscrossed Paris’ annual Salon International de L’Agriculture in February, lending a sympathetic ear to farmer’s economic struggles and vowing to support them, visitors greeted Le Pen with cheers, asking for selfies and shouting “Marine Présidente!” as she walked between cow pens to pet the salon’s other star, Oupette, a one-ton brown Limousine heifer. Days before, Bardella also made sure to pay a visit to the Coordination rurale stand in the corner of one of the seven giant halls, a must for politicians this year. ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT PUSH The movement was born in the early 1990s to protest a landmark reform of the EU’s flagship Common Agricultural Policy that introduced direct subsidies for farmers in lieu of guaranteed prices, tying them to environmental protection measures. Long in the shadow of the dominant FNSEA, Coordination rurale seized the initiative during last year’s large-scale farmers’ protests, with tractor convoys rolling into cities to protest against environmental rules, as well as a hike in fuel prices and cheap agricultural imports coming from other European countries, including Ukraine. The union came out on top in 14 of the country’s 101 agricultural chambers in February’s farming elections, up from just three in the last election in 2019, giving it a much more prominent voice in discussions with the government over farming policy, where FNSEA used to be the dominant player. Agriculture chambers also have wide-ranging prerogatives at the local level, ranging from administrative support to farmers to supporting the implementation of farming and environmental policies. The union came out on top in 14 of the country’s 101 agricultural chambers in February’s farming elections. | Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images While aligned with the FNSEA on some issues, including opposing free trade agreements, the Coordination rurale has taken a more radical stance on others, clashing with environmentalists on water use or reducing the use of pesticides, and slamming what they say is overregulation from the EU and the central government. The union’s leaders have repeatedly framed the FNSEA as part of the establishment, working hand in hand with politicians in Paris and Brussels. Yellow hat candidates have made huge gains in farmlands facing intense economic hardship, including the Bordeaux region, where winemakers who produce for export face another hit from Donald Trump’s trade war. The American president threatened to hike duties on EU exports of wines and spirits to 200 percent if Brussels retaliated against his own duties by hitting U.S. whiskey. Brussels backed down. Trump’s trade aggression and competition from countries such as Ukraine were major talking points at the agri fair, with the union’s leaders calling for more protectionist measures. “It’s a dream to hear a head of state saying he wants to protect producers and his citizens,” said Lenaerts, speaking of Trump’s protectionist push ahead of his wine tariffs announcement. “The character in itself doesn’t make me dream … but I like his attitude towards his country.” SURGE IN THE POLLS Support for both the yellow hats union and Marine Le Pen’s party has surged in many parts of rural France, including in Gers, the administrative district to which Auch belongs. The National Rally got 35 percent of the vote in last June’s snap parliamentary election, called by Macron after his liberals were wiped out in the European vote. That was up 15 percentage points from two years ago in a region that used to be a stronghold of the Social Democrats. Advertisement Beyond the scenic view over limestone farmhouses and villages, there is one extra perk to driving around the countryside here: you won’t get a speeding ticket. Local yellow hat protesters covered all of the area’s speed cameras with tractor tires and fertilizer bags, a signature move that Candelon boasted about on stage at the union’s gathering, saying he and his supporters had disabled 179 of them. Candelon, a former soldier turned duck farmer and father of three, rose to local fame in 2017 when he mounted protests against what he said was unfair competition from Central European countries, protesting against Bulgarian duck meat imports on local supermarket shelves in front of TV cameras. He quickly rose through the ranks after joining the local Coordination rurale section, and was elected as president of the local agriculture chamber under the union’s banner in February’s farming election. Candelon says he rejects physical violence, but that punchy actions are necessary to make farmers’ voices heard. | Olivier Chassignlole/AFP via Getty Images The 38-year-old has also had his share of legal troubles. In 2023, he was fined over online death threats made against local veterinary officials — which Candelon called a one-time slip-up linked to intense pressure after repeated cullings linked to bird flu outbreaks at his farm. He was also questioned by police last year after he and several union members sealed the entrance of the local French Biodiversity Office’s building. The environment agency, in charge of upholding rules on pesticides use and water protection, has been among the union’s recurring targets. The agency denounced the attacks on its agents as “unacceptable” after a member of the Coordination rurale reportedly threatened to torch its vehicles if they set foot on a farm. Sylvie Colas, a spokesperson for the left-leaning union Confederation paysanne and local opponent of Candelon who filed a complaint against him over alleged verbal threats — which he denies — says the union leaders’ “intimidation” tactics have had a chilling effect on locals and public agents alike. “I can’t imagine an agent [from the French Biodiversity Office] making an inspection visit to a farmer in Gers these days,” she said. “It’s Trumpism. There is a constant escalation, to the point where you get the impression that the administration just lies down, says nothing and lets it happen,” she added. Candelon says he rejects physical violence, but that punchy actions are necessary to make farmers’ voices heard, standing by the targeting of speeding cameras and other stunts aiming at “emmerder l’État” (pissing off the government). “We know that when we piss off the government, things start moving. So we are going to keep it up.” ‘LEAVE US THE HELL ALONE’ Local farmers praise Candelon’s leadership and visibility, saying it contrasts with the FNSEA’s inability to improve their working conditions over the years. David Palacin, a 47-year-old cattle farmer from the village of Dému, near Auch, says he was never unionized before seeing Candelon in action. A blockade on a local road during last year’s protests was the rallying moment for him and several of his neighbors. “We stayed for 15 days, day and night,” he recalls, with neighbors and family members taking over during the day when farmers had to get some work done in the fields. Palacin says he was unaware of connections with the far right at the top of the movement, which he doesn’t endorse, but that exasperation over the status quo led many to turn to the communication-savvy activists of Coordination rurale. “We’re not being heard,” said Palacin in his office, a stone’s throw away from his farm’s large open air stalls that house some 200 brown Limousine cows. Unlike some of his struggling neighbours, Palacin has built a diversified business employing 15 people, breeding cattle, selling their meat in his two local butcher shops and shipping young males to Spain and Italy. He is acutely aware of upcoming challenges for local farmers, who face competition from neighbouring countries as well as the EU’s trade partners. “Soy from Brazil is getting in, [while] we’ll soon be banned from even using glyphosate,” Palacin said. “At some point you have to be coherent,” pointing at the deal reached between the EU and the Latin American Mercosur trade bloc which French farmers say will open the floodgates to cheaper products that don’t meet the environmental standards that they have to meet. Palacin says French farmers should also be encouraged to compete for mass agricultural markets. “Everyone going organic is not going to feed the planet,” he adds, pointing at local opposition to a large-scale poultry farm project in the village of Lannepax. “If we don’t produce it, other countries will, and it will get in.” A short drive down the hill, Grégory Julien, a fellow Coordination rurale member and cereal producer, says top-down environmental rules play a big part in the local farmers’ revolt. “Rules are being imposed on us that make no sense on the ground,” he says, citing periodic bans on hedge trimming meant to protect bird nesting. Opposition to environmentalists and what they say is a government overreach is a regular theme in the union’s slogans, with many of its members standing opposite to green activists in local conflicts around water management. At the Auch gathering, Bousquet-Cassagne repeated one of his favorite mantras as he greeted supporters and harangued the crowd : “We are the best peasants in the world. Leave us the hell alone.”

BRUSSELS — Europe’s favorite bottle of red or white may come with an unwanted ingredient: toxic chemicals that don’t break down naturally. A new investigation has found widespread contamination in European wines with trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) — a persistent byproduct of PFAS, the group of industrial chemicals widely known as “forever chemicals.” None of the wines produced in the past few years across 10 EU countries came back clean. In some bottles, levels were found to be 100 times higher than what is typically measured in drinking water. The study, published on Wednesday by the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Europe, adds fresh urgency to calls for a rapid phase-out of pesticides containing PFAS, a family of human-made chemicals designed to withstand heat, water and oil, and to resist breaking down in the environment. Wine production is among the heaviest users of pesticides in European agriculture, particularly fungicides, making vineyards a likely hotspot for chemical accumulation. Grapes are especially vulnerable to fungal diseases, requiring frequent spraying throughout the growing season, including with some products that contain PFAS compounds. Researchers found that while TFA was undetectable in wines harvested before 1988, contamination levels have steadily increased since then — reaching up to 320 micrograms per liter in bottles from the last three vintages, a level more than 3,000 times the EU’s legal limit for pesticide residues in groundwater. The study’s authors link this rise to the growing use of PFAS-based pesticides and newer fluorinated refrigerants over the past decade. “This is a red flag that should not be ignored,” said Helmut Burtscher-Schaden of Austrian NGO Global 2000, who led the research. “The massive accumulation of TFA in plants means we are likely ingesting far more of this forever chemical through our food than previously assumed.” The report, titled Message from the Bottle, analyzed 49 wines, including both conventional and organic products. While organic wines tended to have lower TFA concentrations, none were free of contamination. Wines from Austria showed particularly high levels, though researchers emphasized that the problem spans the continent. “This is not a local issue, it’s a global one,” warned Michael Müller, professor of pharmaceutical and medicinal chemistry at the University of Freiburg, who conducted an independent study that confirmed similar results. “There are no more uncontaminated wines left. Even organic farming cannot fully shield against this pollution because TFA is now ubiquitous in the environment.” The findings highlight the growing scrutiny on PFAS — a broad class of fluorinated compounds used in products from non-stick cookware to firefighting foams and agricultural pesticides. These substances are prized for their durability but have been shown to accumulate in the environment and in living organisms, with links to cancer, liver damage and reproductive harm. While the risks of long-chain PFAS have long been recognized, TFA had until recently been considered relatively benign by both regulators and manufacturers. That view is now being challenged. A 2021 industry-funded study under the EU’s REACH chemicals regulation linked TFA exposure to severe malformations in rabbit fetuses, prompting regulators to propose classifying TFA as “toxic to reproduction.” “This makes it all the more urgent to act,” said Salomé Roynel, policy officer at PAN Europe. She pointed out that under current EU pesticide rules, metabolites that pose risks to reproductive health should not be detectable in groundwater above 0.1 micrograms per liter — a limit TFA regularly exceeds in both water and, now, food. The timing of the report adds political pressure just weeks before EU member states are due to vote on whether to ban flutolanil, a PFAS pesticide identified as a significant TFA emitter. Campaigners argue that the EU must go further, pushing for a group-wide ban on all PFAS pesticides. Wine production is among the heaviest users of pesticides in European agriculture, particularly fungicides, making vineyards a likely hotspot for chemical accumulation. | Philippe Lopez/AFP via Getty Images “The vote on flutolanil is a first test of whether policymakers take this threat seriously,” Roynel said. “But ultimately, we need to eliminate the entire category of these chemicals from agriculture.” Industry groups are likely to push back, arguing that PFAS-based pesticides remain crucial for crop protection. But Müller counters that claim, saying alternatives are available: “There are substitutes. The idea that these chemicals are essential is simply not true.” With the EU’s broader PFAS restrictions currently under discussion, the wine study injects fresh urgency into debates over how to tackle chemical pollution and protect Europe’s food supply. “The more we delay, the worse the contamination becomes,” said Burtscher-Schaden. “And because we’re dealing with a forever chemical, every year of inaction locks in the damage for generations to come.” The European Commission declined to comment on the report. This story has been updated with a no comment from the European Commission.

‘PARKINSON’S IS A MAN-MADE DISEASE’ Europe’s flawed oversight of pesticides may be fueling a silent epidemic, warns Dutch neurologist Bas Bloem. His fight for reform pits him against industry, regulators — and time. Text and photos by BARTOSZ BRZEZIŃSKI in Nijmegen, Netherlands Illustration by Laura Scott for POLITICO In the summer of 1982, seven heroin users were admitted to a California hospital paralyzed and mute. They were in their 20s, otherwise healthy — until a synthetic drug they had manufactured in makeshift labs left them frozen inside their own bodies. Doctors quickly discovered the cause: MPTP, a neurotoxic contaminant that had destroyed a small but critical part of the brain, the substantia nigra, which controls movement. The patients had developed symptoms of late-stage Parkinson’s, almost overnight. The cases shocked neurologists. Until then, Parkinson’s was thought to be a disease of aging, its origins slow and mysterious. But here was proof that a single chemical could reproduce the same devastating outcome. And more disturbing still: MPTP turned out to be chemically similar to paraquat, a widely used weedkiller that, for decades, had been sprayed on farms across the United States and Europe. Advertisement While medication helped some regain movement, the damage was permanent — the seven patients never fully recovered. For a young Dutch doctor named Bas Bloem, the story would become formative. In 1989, shortly after finishing medical school, Bloem traveled to the United States to work with William Langston, the neurologist who had uncovered the MPTP-Parkinson’s link. What he saw there reshaped his understanding of the disease — and its causes. “It was like a lightning bolt,” Bloem tells me. “A single chemical had replicated the entire disease. Parkinson’s wasn’t just bad luck. It could be caused.” THE MAKING OF A MAN-MADE DISEASE Today, at 58, Bloem leads a globally recognized clinic and research team from his base at the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, a medieval Dutch city near the German border. It treats hundreds of patients each year, while the team pioneers studies on early diagnosis and prevention. The hallway outside Bloem’s office was not hectic on my recent visit, but populated — patients moving slowly, deliberately, some with walkers, others with a caregiver’s arm under their own. One is hunched forward in a rigid, deliberate shuffle; another pauses silently by the stairs, his face slack, not absent — just suspended, as if every gesture had become too costly. On its busiest days, the clinic sees over 60 patients. “And more are coming,” Bloem says. Bloem’s presence is both charismatic and kinetic: tall — just over 2 meters, he says with a grin — with a habit of walking while talking, and a white coat lined with color-coded pens. His long, silver-gray hair is swept back, a few strands escaping as he paces the room. Patients paint portraits of him, write poems about him. His team calls him “the physician who never stops moving.” Unlike many researchers of his stature, Bloem doesn’t stay behind the scenes. He speaks at international conferences, consults with policymakers, and states his case to the public as well as to the scientific world. His work spans both care and cause — from promoting movement and personalized treatment to sounding the alarm about what might be triggering the disease in the first place. Alongside his focus on exercise and prevention, he’s become one of the most outspoken voices on the environmental drivers of Parkinson’s — and what he sees as a growing failure to confront their long-term impact on the human brain. Advertisement “Parkinson’s is a man-made disease,” he says. “And the tragedy is that we’re not even trying to prevent it.” When the English surgeon James Parkinson first described the “shaking palsy” in 1817, it was considered a medical curiosity — a rare affliction of aging men. Two centuries later, Parkinson’s disease has more than doubled globally over the past 20 years, and is expected to double again in the next 20. It is now one of the fastest-growing neurological disorders in the world, outpacing stroke and multiple sclerosis. The disease causes the progressive death of dopamine-producing neurons and gradually robs people of movement, speech and, eventually, cognition. There is no cure. Age and genetic predisposition play a role. But Bloem and the wider neurological community contend that those two factors alone cannot explain the steep rise in cases. In a 2024 paper co-authored with U.S. neurologist Ray Dorsey, Bloem wrote that Parkinson’s is “predominantly an environmental disease” — a condition shaped less by genetics and more by prolonged exposure to toxicants like air pollution, industrial solvents and, above all, pesticides. Most of the patients who pass through Bloem’s clinic aren’t farmers themselves, but many live in rural areas where pesticide use is widespread. Over time, he began to notice a pattern: Parkinson’s seemed to crop up more often in regions dominated by intensive agriculture. “Parkinson’s was a very rare disease until the early 20th century,” Bloem says. “Then with the agricultural revolution, chemical revolution, and the explosion of pesticide use, rates started to climb.” Europe, to its credit, has acted on some of the science. Paraquat — the herbicide chemically similar to MPTP — was finally banned in 2007, although only after Sweden took the European Commission to court for ignoring the evidence of its neurotoxicity. Other pesticides with known links to Parkinson’s, such as rotenone and maneb, are no longer approved. Advertisement But that’s not the case elsewhere. Paraquat is still manufactured in the United Kingdom and China, sprayed across farms in the United States, New Zealand and Australia, and exported to parts of Africa and Latin America — regions where Parkinson’s rates are now rising sharply. Once the second-most widely sold herbicide in the world — after glyphosate — paraquat helped drive major profits for its maker, Swiss-based and Chinese-owned company Syngenta. But its commercial peak has long passed, and the chemical now accounts for only a small fraction of the company’s overall business. In the U.S., Syngenta faces thousands of lawsuits from people who say the chemical gave them Parkinson’s. Similar cases are moving ahead in Canada. Syngenta has consistently denied any link between paraquat and Parkinson’s, pointing to regulatory reviews in the U.S., Australia and Japan that found no evidence of causality.  The company told POLITICO that comparisons to MPTP have been repeatedly challenged, citing a 2024 Australian review which concluded that paraquat does not act through the same neurotoxic mechanism. There is strong evidence, the company said in a written response running to more than three pages, that paraquat does not cause neurotoxic effects via the routes most relevant to human exposure — ingestion, skin contact or inhalation. “Paraquat is safe when used as directed,” Syngenta said. Still, for Bloem, even Europe’s bans are no cause for comfort. “The chemicals we banned? Those were the obvious ones,” Bloem says. “What we’re using now might be just as dangerous. We simply haven’t been asking the right questions.” A CHEMICAL EUROPE CAN’T QUIT Among the chemicals still in use, none has drawn more scrutiny — or survived more court battles — than glyphosate. It’s the most widely used herbicide on the planet. You can find traces of it in farmland, forests, rivers, raindrops and even in tree canopies deep inside Europe’s nature reserves. It’s in household dust, animal feed, supermarket produce. In one U.S. study, it showed up in 80 percent of urine samples taken from the general public. For years, glyphosate, sold under the Roundup brand, has been at the center of an international legal and regulatory storm. In the United States, Bayer — which acquired Monsanto, Roundup’s original maker — has paid out more than $10 billion to settle lawsuits linking glyphosate to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.  Advertisement Glyphosate is now off-patent and manufactured by numerous companies worldwide. But Bayer remains its top seller — achieving an estimated €2.6 billion in glyphosate-related sales in 2024, even as market competition and legal pressures cut into profits. In Europe, lobbyists for the agricultural and chemical sectors have fought hard to preserve its use, warning that banning glyphosate would devastate farming productivity. National authorities remain split. France has tried to phase it out. Germany has promised a full ban — but never delivered. In 2023 — despite mounting concerns, gaps in safety data and political pressure — the European Union reauthorized it for another 10 years. While most of the debate around glyphosate has centered on cancer, some studies have found possible links to reproductive harm, developmental disorders, endocrine disruption and even childhood cancers. Glyphosate has never been definitively linked to Parkinson’s. Bayer told POLITICO in a written response that no regulatory review has ever concluded any of its products are associated with the disease, and pointed to the U.S.-based Agricultural Health Study, which followed nearly 40,000 pesticide applicators and found no statistically significant association between glyphosate and the disease. Bayer said glyphosate is one of the most extensively studied herbicides in the world, with no regulator identifying it as neurotoxic or carcinogenic. But Bloem argues that the absence of a proven link says more about how we regulate risk than how safe the chemical actually is. Unlike paraquat, which causes immediate oxidative stress and has been associated with Parkinson’s in both lab and epidemiological studies, glyphosate’s potential harms are more indirect — operating through inflammation, microbiome disruption or mitochondrial dysfunction, all mechanisms known to contribute to the death of dopamine-producing neurons. But this makes them harder to detect in traditional toxicology tests, and easier to dismiss. “The problem isn’t that we know nothing,” Bloem says. “It’s that we’re not measuring the kind of damage Parkinson’s causes.” Responding, Bayer pointed to paraquat as one of only two agricultural chemicals that studies have linked directly to the development of Parkinson’s disease — even as Syngenta, its manufacturer, maintains there is no proven connection. Advertisement The EU’s current pesticide evaluation framework, like that of many other regulatory systems, focuses primarily on acute toxicity — short-term signs of poisoning like seizures, sudden organ damage or death. Manufacturers submit safety data, much of it based on animal studies looking for visible behavioral changes. But unlike for the heroin users in California, who were exposed to an unusually potent toxin, Parkinson’s doesn’t announce itself with dramatic symptoms in the short term. It creeps in as neurons die off, often over decades. “We wait for a mouse to walk funny,” Bloem says. “But in Parkinson’s, the damage is already done by the time symptoms appear.” The regulatory tests also isolate individual chemicals, rarely examining how they interact in the real world. But a 2020 study in Japan showed how dangerous that assumption may be. When rodents were exposed to glyphosate and MPTP — the very compound that mimicked Parkinson’s in the California heroin cases — the combination caused dramatically more brain cell loss than either substance alone. “That’s the nightmare scenario,” Bloem says. “And we’re not testing for it.” Even when data does exist, it doesn’t always reach regulators. Internal company documents released in court suggest Syngenta knew for decades that paraquat could harm the brain — a charge the company denies, insisting there is no proven link. More recently, Bayer and Syngenta have faced criticism for failing to share brain toxicity studies with EU authorities in the past — data they had disclosed to U.S. regulators. In one case, Syngenta failed to disclose studies on the pesticide abamectin. The Commission and the EU’s food and chemical agencies have called this a clear breach. Bloem sees a deeper issue. “Why should we assume these companies are the best stewards of public health?” he asked. “They’re making billions off these chemicals.”  Syngenta said that none of the withheld studies related to Parkinson’s disease and that it has since submitted all required studies under EU transparency rules. The company added that it is “fully aligned with the new requirements for disclosure of safety data.” Some governments are already responding to the links between Parkinson’s and farming. France, Italy and Germany now officially recognize Parkinson’s as a possible occupational disease linked to pesticide exposure — a step that entitles some affected farmworkers to compensation. But even that recognition, Bloem argues, hasn’t forced the broader system to catch up. WHERE SCIENCE STOPS, POLITICS BEGINS Bloem’s mistrust leads straight to the institutions meant to protect public health — and to people like Bernhard Url, the man who has spent the past decade running one of the most important among them.  Url is the outgoing executive director of the European Food Safety Authority, or EFSA — the EU’s scientific watchdog on food and chemical risks, based in Parma, Italy. The agency has come under scrutiny in the past over its reliance on company-submitted studies. Url doesn’t deny that structure, but says the process is now more transparent and scientifically rigorous. I met Url while he was on a visit to Brussels, during his final months as EFSA’s executive director. Austrian by nationality and a veterinarian by training, he speaks precisely, choosing his words with care. If Bloem is kinetic and outwardly urgent, Url is more reserved — a scientist still operating within the machinery Bloem wants to reform. Advertisement Still, Url didn’t dispute the core of the critique. “There are areas we don’t yet take into consideration,” he told me, pointing to emerging science around microbiome disruption, chemical synergy and chronic low-dose exposure. He didn’t name Parkinson’s, but the implications were clear. “We’re playing catch-up,” he admitted. Part of the problem, he suggested, is structural. The agency relies on a system built around predefined methods and industry-supplied data. “We assess risk based on what we’re given, and what the framework allows us to assess,” Url said. “But science evolves faster than legislation. That’s always the tension.” EFSA also works under constraints that its pharmaceutical counterpart, the European Medicines Agency, does not. “EMA distributes money to national agencies,” Url said. “We don’t. There’s less integration, less shared work. We rely on member states volunteering experts. We’re not in the same league.” A pesticide-free farm in in Gavorrano, Italy. | Alberto Pizzoli/AFP via Getty Images Url didn’t sound defensive. If anything, he sounded like someone who’s been pushing against institutional gravity for a long time. He described EFSA as an agency charged with assessing a food system worth trillions — but working with limited scientific resources, and within a regulatory model that was never designed to capture the risks of chronic diseases like Parkinson’s. “We don’t get the support we need to coordinate across Europe,” he said. “Compared to the economic importance of the whole agri-food industry … it’s breadcrumbs.” But he drew a sharp line when it came to responsibility. “The question of what’s safe enough — that’s not ours to answer,” he said. “That’s a political decision.” EFSA can flag a risk. It’s up to governments to decide whether that risk is acceptable. Advertisement It was a careful way of saying what Bloem had said more bluntly: Science may illuminate the path, but policy chooses where — and whether — to walk it. And in a food system shaped by powerful interests, that choice is rarely made in a vacuum. “There are gaps,” Url said, “and we’ve said that.” But gaps in science don’t always lead to action. Especially when the cost of precaution is seen as an economic threat. THE DOCTOR WHO WON’T SLOW DOWN Evidence from the field is becoming harder to ignore. In France, a nationwide study found that Parkinson’s rates were significantly higher in vineyard regions that rely heavily on fungicides. Another study found that areas with higher agricultural pesticide use — often measured by regional spending — tend to have higher rates of Parkinson’s, suggesting a dose-response relationship. In Canada and the U.S., maps of Parkinson’s clusters track closely with areas of intensive agriculture. The Netherlands has yet to produce comparable data. But Bloem believes it’s only a matter of time. “If we mapped Parkinson’s here, we’d find the same patterns,” he says. “We just haven’t looked yet.” In fact, early signs are already emerging. The Netherlands, known for having one of the highest pesticide use rates in Europe, has seen a 30 percent rise in Parkinson’s cases over the past decade — a slower increase than in some other regions of the world, but still notable, Bloem says. In farming regions like the Betuwe, on the lower reaches of the Rhine River, physiotherapists have reported striking local clusters. One village near Arnhem counted over a dozen cases. “I don’t know of a single farmer who’s doing things purposely wrong,” Bloem says. “They’re just following the rules. The problem is, the rules are wrong.” To Bloem, reversing the epidemic means shifting the regulatory mindset from reaction to prevention. That means requiring long-term neurotoxicity studies, testing chemical combinations, accounting for real-world exposure, genetic predisposition and the kind of brain damage Parkinson’s causes — and critically, making manufacturers prove safety, rather than scientists having to prove harm. “We don’t ban parachutes after they fail,” Bloem says. “But that’s what we do with chemicals. We wait until people are sick.” Advertisement His team is also studying prevention-focused interventions — including exercise, diet and stress reduction — in people already diagnosed with Parkinson’s, in one of the most comprehensive trials of its kind. Still, Bloem is realistic about the limits of individual action. “You can’t exercise your way out of pesticide exposure,” he says. “We need upstream change.” Bloem has seen it before — the same pattern playing out in slow motion. “Asbestos,” he says “Lead in gasoline. Tobacco. Every time, we acted decades after the damage was done.” The science existed. The evidence had accumulated. But the decision to intervene always lagged. “It’s not that we don’t know enough,” he adds. “It’s that the system is not built to listen when the answers are inconvenient.” The clinic has grown quiet. Most of the staff have left for the day, the corridors are still. Bloem gathers his things, but he’s not finished yet. One more phone call to make — something he’ll take, as always, while walking. As we stand up to go into the hallway, he pauses. “If we don’t fix this now,” he says, “we’re going to look back in 50 years and ask: ‘What the hell were we thinking?’” He slips on a pair of black headphones, nods goodbye and turns toward the exit. Outside, he’s already striding across the Radboud campus, talking into the cold evening air — still moving, still making calls, still trying to bend a stubborn system toward change. Graphics by Lucia Mackenzie.

BRUSSELS — Donald Trump is an equal-opportunity mercantilist. When it comes to the European Union’s €198 billion trade surplus with the United States, he’ll claw at any sector he can. Brandishing 25 percent tariffs on EU steel and aluminum, the U.S. president has demanded that the bloc buy more American cars, fossil fuels, weapons, pharmaceuticals — and food. “They don’t take our farm products, they take almost nothing and we take everything from them … tremendous amounts of food and farm products,” Trump complained to journalists in Florida earlier this month, decrying his country’s €18 billion deficit in agri-food trade with Europe. Taking more of the first four is feasible. The Commission can lower its 10 percent duty on imported automobiles, while EU countries can purchase less oil from Kazakhstan, fewer missiles from South Korea, and smaller drug batches from Switzerland. These demands would hurt local industry, but they are doable if Brussels wants to appease the irascible ultranationalist. The fifth is not. A range of culinary, phytosanitary and political obstacles bar the way to Europe’s importing most American staples — from Texan beef and Kentucky chicken to Wisconsin milk and Kansas wheat. Then there’s the fact the new EU commissioners for agriculture and animal welfare, Christophe Hansen and Olivér Várhelyi, want to tightly regulate agri-food imports. It may be a bitter pill for the president to swallow. But not even his “Art of the Deal” can vanquish Europe’s Art of the Meal. THE INVISIBLE HAND PICKS EUROPEAN FOOD  Contrary to what Trump says, the imbalance in agri-food trade isn’t due to unfair customs duties. U.S. and EU rates are similarly low for most products: zero for hard liquor, a few percent for wine and cereals, and 5 percent to 10 percent for fruits, vegetables, cured meats, confectionery, canned food and processed goods. The exceptions are EU dairy and pork (often upward of 20 percent), yet these aren’t areas where American rivals have much of a chance anyway, given that the EU runs a massive surplus in both categories (Germany and Spain are top exporters). Moreover, the U.S. is protective too — for example, on beef — and accepted higher EU dairy duties in the 1988 Uruguay round of GATT negotiations. Why? Because it extracted a promise that the EU wouldn’t subsidize oilseed production. Why would that matter to the Americans? Because that’s what they’re best at cultivating. Farms in the U.S. are on average 10 times bigger than in the EU and are able to churn out raw materials: hunks of meat, blocks of cheese and silos full of cereals. However, apart from the odd Californian wine, the U.S. doesn’t have many specialty products to vaunt. Europe is the opposite: A mosaic of small, regionally diverse farms, its producers are uncompetitive in most commodities, but possess an advantage in traditional foods. For example, the continent has five times more “geographical indication” trademarks than the U.S., allowing its farmers to transform simple crops into premium goods.  It’s bad agribusiness but great gastronomy, which is the second reason Americans spend more on EU farm goods than vice versa. While Americans happily gobble and slurp European GIs, Europeans typically find U.S. foods too fatty, salty, sugary or alcoholic for their palates. “If you look at the product composition, it’s very different,” said John Clarke, until recently the EU’s top agricultural trade negotiator. “The EU exports mostly high-value products: wine, spirits, charcuterie, olive oil, cheese. The U.S. exports low-value commodities: soya, maize, almonds … the fact [these have] a lower unit value is a fact of life.” During Trump’s first term, a bad harvest in Brazil and Argentina at least gave Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker an opportunity to offer Washington an apparent concession: The EU would buy more American soybeans. Trump gleefully celebrated what was in fact a financial necessity for European farmers, who need soy for animal feed. This time that won’t work, though. Brazilian grain harvests are near record levels, while Ukraine is investing heavily in oilseeds. The Commission is rolling out a protein strategy that  encourages supply diversification and more domestic production. And Europeans are eating less red meat, dragging soybean demand down. PHYTOSANITARY PARANOIA If Trump wants Europeans to eat more American food, he’ll have to convince them to swallow something even tougher: U.S. food safety standards. Europeans might buy American software, movies and weapons, but they aren’t keen on U.S. beef pumped with hormones, chlorine-washed chicken or genetically modified corn. The main reason? Brussels’ precautionary principle — a regulatory approach that requires proof a product is safe before it can be sold. The U.S., by contrast, operates on a risk-based system, where anything not proven harmful is fair game. That divergence has created a trade minefield. American beef exports are capped at 35,000 metric tons annually under a special quota, thanks to an EU-wide ban on hormone-treated meat. U.S. poultry is largely locked out because of pathogen reduction treatments — a fancy way of saying Americans rinse their chicken in antimicrobial washes the EU deems unacceptable. Genetically modified crops, a staple of U.S. agribusiness, also face strict EU restrictions, requiring lengthy approvals and labeling rules that spook European consumers. Pesticides are another flash point. Today, over 70 different pesticides banned in the EU as toxic to human health and the environment remain widespread in U.S. grain and fruit farming. That includes chlorpyrifos, an insecticide linked to brain damage in children, and paraquat, a weedkiller associated with a higher long-term risk of Parkinson’s disease. As a result, Brussels imposes residue limits that frequently force U.S. growers to create separate, EU-compliant supply chains. While Trump may rage about tariffs and trade imbalances, it’s Brussels’ food safety regulations — not import duties — that are keeping much American food off European plates. And with the EU mulling even stricter crackdowns on imports that don’t conform to its standards, expect the transatlantic trade menu to get even leaner. DON’T ANGER THE FARMERS Trump may not be aware, but European capitals also witnessed furious farmer protests last year. Fear of foreign competition was one of the main triggers, with unions bitterly criticizing imports from Ukraine and South America’s Mercosur bloc for their looser production standards, laxer agrochemical use and cheaper agricultural land. Poland, Hungary and Slovakia have still not lifted their illegal blockades on Ukrainian grain, and the Commission is in no position to force them to do so. In fact, Brussels has responded by making fair pricing for farmers the lodestar of its upcoming agri-food policy. The EU even wants to apply “mirror clauses” to imports to align rules on animal welfare and pesticides, according to a leaked draft of a long-term policy vision due out this week. A surge in U.S. imports would likely prompt the same attacks. These could be politically decisive ahead of stormy presidential races this year in Poland and Romania, two European breadbaskets, as well as major elections in France, Italy and Spain in the next two years.  So is there no solution to Trump’s hunger for agri-trade parity? It seems not, unless the president decides to massively expand the U.S. military’s presence in the EU, bringing tens of thousands more peanut butter-loving troops to defend the continent’s security. It’s a crazy idea of course. Then again … Giovanna Coi contributed reporting.

BRUSSELS — When European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Union leaders roll into Kyiv on Monday to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, Ukraine will be looking for answers — on military aid, political backing and a critical economic question: trade. At risk of losing its privileged access to the EU market this June, Ukraine is scrambling to get an extension of tariff suspensions that have helped keep its economy afloat in wartime. But as Kyiv presses for clarity, European leaders are stalling, caught between pledging continued solidarity, the shifting stance of United States President Donald Trump, and appeasing antsy farmers at home. Trump’s return to the White House has rattled Kyiv. In his first month on the job, he has signaled that U.S. support for Ukraine is no longer assured, refused to take calls from von der Leyen, and suggested that Kyiv should cede territory to Russia to end the war. His latest remarks — falsely blaming Ukraine for “starting” the war and branding President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator” — have heightened concerns that Washington could pull its support. “If Washington forces a peace on Moscow’s terms, we’ll need Europe more than ever,” a Ukrainian official told POLITICO, granted anonymity like others interviewed in this story due to the sensitivity of the matter. FARMERS PUSH BACK The EU’s tariff breaks, known as Autonomous Trade Measures, were introduced in 2022 and threw an economic lifeline to Ukraine. Initially a show of solidarity, they have since become a flashpoint, with Poland and France leading efforts to impose safeguards in 2024 on seven “sensitive” farm products, including sugar and poultry, capping duty-free imports. Now, with the tariff breaks set to expire on June 5 and EU leaders pledging to update the terms of a 2016 trade deal instead, European farm groups argue that existing safeguards are insufficient. Ukrainian sugar, for example, remains so cheap that even after tariffs kick in post-quota, it is still profitable for European firms to import it. Lobbyists in France, Germany and Poland insist their farmers cannot compete unless Brussels intervenes more aggressively. Ukraine’s agriculture sector has rebounded faster than expected. | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images Adding to tensions, Ukraine’s agriculture sector has rebounded faster than expected. Despite Russia’s occupation of its farmland and the fact Ukraine is the most heavily mined country in the world, its farmers have restored much of their productive capacity, regained Black Sea export routes, and adapted to wartime conditions by ramping up production and diversifying exports. While trade negotiations on industrial exports have gone smoothly, agricultural exports — which represent over half of Ukraine’s total exports — remain highly contentious. Ukraine’s farm revival, once seen as a strength, is now a liability in the trade talks, fueling concerns in some EU states that unrestricted Ukrainian imports could undercut local producers. Ukrainian officials reject accusations of market disruption. They argue that their agricultural exports complement rather than threaten European production, blaming trade tensions on political maneuvering rather than actual market distortions. “We’ve proven we can still deliver,” said a Ukrainian farm lobbyist. “But that’s exactly why the Europeans are nervous. They’re afraid we’ll flood their market.” THE BRUSSELS BATTLE BEGINS As von der Leyen arrives in Kyiv she faces mounting pressure to clarify Ukraine’s trade future. But even if she makes an offer, the real battle lies ahead — balancing farmer pressure with broader political stability in the EU. Poland is central to the dilemma. Although Prime Minister Donald Tusk ousted the nationalist Law and Justice party over a year ago, his pro-Ukraine stance is tempered by the farmer protests. With a presidential election in May, Tusk’s centrist government is wary of alienating rural voters — but is also poised to block Ukraine’s broader trade prospects. “There is no place for Ukraine in the EU unless it aligns its agricultural standards with ours,” a senior Polish official said, referencing concerns over Ukraine’s looser pesticide regulations despite its progress toward EU alignment. “We cannot liberalize trade right now — there is no question about it.” While von der Leyen is expected to reaffirm EU support for Ukraine’s economic resilience, trade and agriculture officials in Kyiv worry they are being strung along. “For now, we see an ambiguous vision from the European Commission and the EU regarding our future trade relations,” Agriculture Minister Vitaliy Koval told the Interfax agency on Thursday, adding that this uncertainty is pushing Kyiv to look beyond Europe and into markets like Africa and the Middle East. Still, that shift comes at a cost. Koval acknowledged that the EU remains Ukraine’s most valuable trading partner due to its premium prices and established logistics. For EU officials, Trump’s stance makes the trade question even more urgent. If Ukraine loses both U.S. backing and its privileged EU trade terms, it could find itself dangerously isolated just as its economy remains heavily dependent on Western aid. “The EU has to wake up,” the Ukrainian official said. “If we lose U.S. support and then Europe caves to its own farmers, we’re on our own. And Russia will be watching.”