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The honking, tractor-induced traffic jams across Spain last week highlighted a fundamental problem with European Union economic policy, indeed all EU policy - namely that it fails (in fact is bound to fail, by its nature) to distinguish sufficiently between the plight of different member ... states and of different sectors within those states.
One-size-fits-all policy, as we were reminded once again last week, simply doesn't work in the governance of a bloc as large and diverse as the EU. Because it is virtually impossible for Brussels to act in the interests of more than a handful of its subjects at any one time, it often ends up acting in the interests of no-one but itself.
In this case, protesting farmers have drawn the EU's attention to the fact that its greenhouse emissions and carbon reduction targets just aren't working on the ground - literally. The EU admitted as much last week when, prompted by the tractor tsunami, it retracted its plan to halve the use of pesticides across the bloc.
Farmers in Spain and across the EU are rightly angry, because Brussels is subjugating agricultural regulations to broader economic policy - and, what's worse, to policy that is misconceived in the first place.
The European Union's overarching goals - of becoming carbon neutral by 2050 and reducing greenhouse emissions by at least 55% by 2030 - are presented by Brussels as 'green' initiatives; but because of their technological and financial implications, they are really economic policies in disguise.
As such, they not only skate over the issue of whether all 27 member states are economically-capable of making the changes necessary to meet those goals; but they also fail to account for the increased demands on affected sectors within member states, especially farming. Hence, in part, the honking tractors.
At least the European Union seems to be listening to the farmers' complaints. As well as making a U-turn over the pesticide target, it has also exempted the farming sector from greenhouse gas-reduction legislation.
In a statement that nicely summarised all of the EU's in-built defects, Brussels' agriculture minister Janusz Wojciechowski (whose home country of Poland also saw tractor demonstrations last week) said, "The [green initiatives are] general target[s] for the whole economy, but in agriculture, we should take into account the specifics of agriculture."
From a member of a government that finds it difficult to deal in specifics, this represents a blinding flash of self-awareness.
The agricultural workers who took to the roads in their tractors last week across the bloc have shown the EU a way to vastly improve its governance, not just in the farming sector but across all member states and industries. All it has to do is remember that no size fits all.
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