Romanian farmers protest in the front of the European Commission headquarters in Bucharest on April 7, 2023.
© DANIEL MIHAILESCU / AFP / picturedesk.com
The trade in Ukrainian grain during the war raises questions about what different actors in the European Union mean when talking about solidarity.
One month into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Union adopted a plan to create Solidarity Lanes. These were conceived as transport corridors that would enable the export of Ukrainian agricultural goods. Ukraine is one of the world’s largest producers of wheat, maize, and sunflower. These exports are central not only to its economy but also to European and global food security. The danger of Ukraine not being able to export its grains led to a sharp rise in prices and raised concerns about an impending global food crisis. With the Solidarity Lanes the EU sought to suspend import tariffs and quotas as well as to make phytosanitary controls more flexible.
The Solidarity Lanes, and later the Black Sea Grain Initiative brokered by the United Nations, helped lower prices. However, at the end of January 2023, Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia jointly requested the EU to take immediate measures to mitigate the financial losses their farmers incurred since the Solidarity Lanes were established. According to them, Ukrainian grain was being sold at a discount and spilled into the local markets, undercutting domestic farmers. Moreover, the lanes had created logistical bottlenecks that hampered the sales of local farmers and further depressed prices.
Two months later, the EU announced compensations only for farmers in Bulgaria, Romania, and Poland, but the amount of this financial relief did not satisfy the claimants and protests ensued. Farmers protested in Brussels and in the different countries, with tractors blocking borders and highways. Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia announced unilateral bans on imports of Ukrainian grain, and Romania threatened to do the same.
Following closely the Romanian protests, I noticed how the farmers’ contestation challenged the notion of solidarity implied in the creation of the Solidarity Lanes. They held banners that said: “Solidarity, not suffering,” “Do not punish our solidarity!” or “Solidarity should not be a risk!” What were they trying to say?
To better understand these messages, one needs to look at how they were first articulated in an open letter addressed to Romania’s officials at the end of February 2023 by the Alliance for Agriculture and Cooperation, an organization formed by four of the country’s biggest farmers’ professional associations. It stated:
We are in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and we understand the farmers’ desperate need to sell their current grain stocks at a discount to prepare for the new season. Nevertheless, although we understood the need for a transit corridor last year and we do our best to support the Ukrainians, thinking of their farms in a humanitarian way, we cannot do this if the European Union does not treat Romanian farmers in the same way. Until now the costs of this solidarity lane was not shared equally amongst member states, the most affected being the states that share a border [with Ukraine].
What the farmers’ representatives argued is that solidarity is grounded in a humanitarian perspective, but also that the financial costs entailed by the act of solidarity have to be distributed collectively and equitably among EU members.
Solidarity has been a staple feature of the political discourse in the EU since the 2008 financial crisis, appearing in political debates about the Greek debt crisis, the refugee crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic, and now Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Although grassroots networks were mobilized by ideas of solidarity during these moments of crisis, in political talk the notion of solidarity appears as an empty signifier employed instrumentally. There are many reasons to believe that this is also the case now.
Some politicians, pundits, and scholars argue that EU’s solidarity hides a geopolitical interest, usually describing the war in Ukraine as a “proxy war” between the United States, its Western allies, and Russia, which is also the Kremlin’s argument. In the case of the Solidarity Lanes, the perspective of some Romanian farmers is that they help not Ukraine but rather American companies that operate the grain transit.
Others argue that the farmers blocking the transit of Ukrainian grain and the governments that ban it show a lack of solidarity or a “part-time solidarity,” which contributes directly or indirectly to Russia’s weaponization of food. In his speech to the UN General Assembly in September 2023, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that: “It is a clear Russian attempt to weaponize the food shortage on the global market, in exchange for recognition of some, if not all, of the captured territories” and that “it is alarming to see how some in Europe play out solidarity in a political theatre—making thriller from the grain. They may seem to play their own role but in fact, they are helping set the stage to a Moscow actor.”
The farmers’ insistence on banning Ukrainian agricultural goods from transiting their country is also seen as creating opportunities for spreading Russian propaganda and as opening up a discursive space for right-wing parties preparing for elections. What seems to be behind this lack of or part-time solidarity is the pursuit of profit. Farmers, some argue, are either trying to make up for losses from trying to speculate on prices at the beginning of the war or to get as many subsidies as possible.
This debacle that puts European solidarity in question is because, unlike some of the grassroots solidarity initiatives emerging in times of crisis, politicians, entrepreneurs, and even scholars cannot imagine solidarity that is not mediated by the capitalist market. EU solidarity is formulated in terms of re-establishing the market equilibrium to restore prices to their prewar level. The farmers consider this an intervention that distorts the market and seek to mitigate the effects of this distortion by asking for compensation, the reinstatement of lifted tariffs and quotas, or for a ban on transit. Ukraine sues the countries that banned the grain transit for violating international trade regulations. It is as if, as in Frederic Jameson’s quip, “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
By arguing this I am not trying to reproduce the distinction between an affective morally led solidarity and a neoliberal self-interested calculative one. As Daria Krivonos showed, solidarity cannot be sustained by affect alone. Moreover, grassroots networks of solidarity might themselves reinforce unjust hierarchies based on class, gender, and race. Nonetheless, networks such as the Solidarity Collective can offer ideas and practical solutions for imagining scalable alternatives beyond capitalism. Their work in establishing an international anti-authoritarian network that supports those in Ukraine who fight Russia not for an imagined nation but for social, economic, and gender equality can be a source of inspiration for future EU and international solidarity.
“Full text: Zelenskyy’s speech to the UN General Assembly,” Al Jazeera, September 20, 2023.
Jameson, F., “Future City,” New Left Review, May/June 2003, No. 21.
https://www.solidaritycollectives.org/en/manifesto-en/
Stefan Voicu is a social anthropologist and research fellow at the University of Bologna. He was a CEU Postdoctoral Fellow at the IWM in 2023–2024.
