The European Green Deal and the peasant cause: Class frustration, cultural backlash and right-wing nationalist populism in farmers’ protests in Poland

Abstract

The article analyses the farmer protests that broke out in the spring of 2024 in Poland and their main demands in the broader context of national and EU politics. The author focus on two aspects that could be seen on peasants' banners during the protests. There were the challenges of the European Green Deal in rural areas in Poland and the fears of opening EU markets to agricultural products from Ukraine. The empirical material used in this article comes from focus group interviews conducted with agricultural activists and participants in agricultural protests. The article asks to what extent these protests against the EU's climate policy and the import of cheap food from Ukraine were carried out under a “substitute banner” and to what extent they were an element of more general economic and systemic conflicts.