Protesting Dutch farmers eye gains in elections

Dutch voters go to the polls in local elections on Wednesday, with a party of angry farmers posing a challenge to Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his climate change plans.

The provincial vote, which also determines the shape of parliament’s upper house, comes after months of turbulent farmer protests that have won the support of former US president Donald Trump.

Opinion polls show the “Farmers-Citizen Movement” (BBB) — which was only founded in 2019 and has just one MP — could be one of Wednesday’s big winners at the expense of Rutte’s ruling coalition.

A strong showing would mean the farmers could ally with other parties in the senate to block Rutte’s legislation, which is expected to reduce livestock numbers and possibly close some farms.

Rutte, the Netherlands’ longest serving leader who has been in power since 2010, says he has “hope” that the four-party coalition led by his centre-right VVD party can solve problems including the farm plans.

The premier told Dutch television at the weekend that the coalition has “always been prepared to take responsibility under difficult circumstances” and dismissed speculation he could quit.

But farmers in the Netherlands — a nation of nearly 18 million people that is the world’s second largest agricultural exporter after the United States — say the government has ignored them.

“We don’t really feel heard,” Erik Stegink, national president of the BBB and a pig farmer himself, told AFP. “Sometimes we don’t even feel welcome in our own country anymore.”

The farmers’ protests and their symbol of an upside-down Dutch flag have attracted global attention, with farmers blockading highways, dumping manure on roads and rallying noisily outside politicians’ houses.

Thousands of farmers rallied in The Hague on Saturday, at the same time as climate activists blocked a main road in another part of the city.

The Dutch government says it must reduce nitrogen emissions by 50 percent by 2030, with the greenhouse gas emitted in particular by fertilisers and manure.

This is necessary, it says, to ease a housing crisis in the Netherlands, as large construction projects that also emit nitrogen have been suspended by a court order on environmental grounds.

Rutte’s government says it plans to release 25 billion euros ($26.8 billion) by 2035 to help the agricultural sector, particularly through reducing livestock numbers but possibly also through the “expropriation” of farms.

The farmers say they are being unfairly targeted by the still unfinalised proposals compared to sectors such as industry and transport.

The plans have also been seized on by the global far-right, who allege, without evidence, a sinister “globalist” plot to rob farmers of their land.

But opinion polls show that the Dutch far-right Forum for Democracy (FvD) party, which won the last provincial elections in 2019, is set for losses this time.

Its leader Thierry Baudet has in recent years pushed Covid-sceptic conspiracies and said he hoped “hero” Russian President Vladimir Putin wins the war in Ukraine.