by Hundreds of protesting farmers threw eggs and stones at the European Parliament, lit fires, dumped manure and lit fireworks to pressure a summit of European leaders to do more to help them with taxes, rising costs and environmental rules.
Many farmers traveled from countries across Europe including France, Germany and Italy after weeks of protests in which tractors blocked roads, ports and entrances to cities. Small groups of protesting farmers in Brussels tried to destroy barriers in front of the European Parliament but the police fired tear gas and sprayed water to push them back.
A statue on the square was damaged and about 1,300 agricultural tractors and trucks blocked the main roads in Brussels with slogans such as “No farmers, no food”. Security personnel in riot gear stood guard behind the barriers where the leaders were meeting at the European Council headquarters.
A plume of black smoke from piles of rubber tires filled the air and at one point police had to hose down straw and dung that had been unceremoniously dumped in front of the parliament building.
“If you see how many people are here today, and if you see that it’s all over Europe, you have to have hope,” Kevin Bertens, a Belgian farmer, told Reuters. “You need us. Help us!”
Pierre Sansdrap, a Belgian dairy farmer, told AFP it was “symbolically important” to protest in Brussels. “To change things, you have to come here,” he said.
Farmers’ union representatives said they were “generally fed up” with “too much administration” and rules telling them how to farm.
Olivier Devalckeneer, from the Fédération Wallonne d’Agriculture, told the Gardaí: “We want change; we want farming to be protected, not undermined.”
Farmers in various European countries have said they are not being paid enough for their produce, are struggling with green taxes and rules and are facing unfair competition from abroad.
Although the farmers’ crisis is not officially on the agenda of the EU summit, which has so far focused on aid to Ukraine, an EU diplomat said the situation was likely to be discussed with the farmers later in the day.
As a sign of the pressure on the French government, the President, Emmanuel Macron, arranged a face-to-face meeting with the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
Macron’s office said the two would discuss “the future of European agriculture”, following farmers’ protests in France.
Moves by the European Commission have failed to quell demonstrations and roadblocks that have spread across Europe’s main agricultural powers, particularly France and Germany. The EU’s measures included a temporary exemption from rules requiring farmland to be left fallow as well as limits on the import of some agricultural products from Ukraine, on which tariffs fell after Russia’s 2022 invasion.
In France, hundreds of farmers continued to block motorways and attacked several supermarkets. Around 200 tractors blocked 50 supermarkets in the Haute-Loire department in southern France as they condemned what one local farmers’ association called “inappropriate behavior by large retailers” which “put crazy pressure on our farmers with suffocating margins “.
After several government announcements of aid to farmers failed to quash protests, French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Thursday announced an additional €150m (£128m) in aid to farmers in need, although not the details have yet to be laid out.
The pledge appeared to go down well, with France’s two major farmers’ unions, the FNSEA and Jeunes Agriculteurs, saying they would tell their members to suspend protests and erect roadblocks across the country .
French farmers have expressed anger at cheap imported food, which is becoming increasingly common among French shoppers struggling to make ends meet. Attal promised that he would make life easier for farmers and better protect them at the level of France and the EU. He said this would include France banning cheap imports of products that use a pesticide banned in Europe and ensuring that food labels are clearly specified if products are imported.
Attal added that France wanted the EU to issue a “clear” definition of lab-grown meat.
He told a press conference that cultured meat was “not part of what we understand from the French diet” and that France wanted “clear legislation at European level to determine what is lab cultured meat”.
In January, agriculture ministers from France, Austria and Italy launched what they called a “culinary alliance” in an attempt to open a public debate on lab-grown meat. Synthetic meat cannot be sold in the EU because it is not authorized by the European Food Safety Authority.
Environmentalists see lab-grown meat as a way to help reduce the production of greenhouse gases created by livestock farming. Animal rights groups also see it as a way to reduce the death and poor conditions of live animals bred for food.
Marc Fesneau, France’s agriculture minister, said there would be a “pause” in France’s national plan to reduce pesticide use. He said the pesticide plan would be “put back on the drawing board … as long as it takes to rework some of these aspects, to simplify it”.
Bruno Le Maire, the economy minister, said that all large supermarkets would be inspected to see if they comply with the law designed to ensure fair prices for farmers’ products.
