by Farmers clashed violently with police in the European quarter of Brussels, spraying officers with liquid manure and setting tire mounds on fire, as EU agriculture ministers met to discuss the crisis in their sector.
As farmers also protested in Madrid and on the Polish-German border, at least 900 tractors jammed streets in the center of the Belgian capital, police said, with protesters throwing bottles and eggs and lighting fireworks and riot police fired water cannons. .
Farmers from Spain, Portugal and Italy joined their colleagues in Belgium for the latest month-long show of force, a Europe-wide movement demanding action on high costs, low produce prices, cheap non-EU imports and on the EU’s strict environmental rules.
The rolling protests, which led on Saturday that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, was heckled by angry farmers at the Paris agricultural fair, unnerved leaders before the European elections in June which are likely to have big gains for far right populist parties.
Ministers were meeting to discuss European Commission proposals to ease pressure on farmers, including simplifying the bloc’s common agricultural policy (CAP) by reducing farm inspections and exempting small farms from some green rules.
“We need something practical, something operational,” said French Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau, adding that while there was room for “adjustments within the current rules,” to make some demands “to the legislation would need to be changed”.
Fesneau said that it didn’t matter whether the changes were made before or after the European Parliament elections, but “what’s important now is moving forward. We need to set a target, to set the foundations of a CAP that gives people peace of mind.”
Germany’s agriculture minister, Cem Özdemir, said that the EU had to ensure that farmers could achieve a fair living if they chose biodiversity and environmental measures. He said the average farmer “spends a quarter of their time at their desk” because of the EU’s “bureaucratic monster”.
David Clarinval, the Belgian agriculture minister, said that the farmers’ complaints had been “clearly heard” but urged them to refrain from violence, while the Irish Agriculture Minister, Charlie McConalogue, said that red tape must be a priority.
The EU should ensure that policies were “simple, proportionate and as simple as possible for farmers to implement”, he said, stressing that “we appreciate the work over be important what farmers do every day. produce food”.
The EU has already backed away from various parts of its main green deal plan in an attempt to court farmers, remove references to farming emissions from the 2040 climate roadmap, withdraw a law to restrict the use of pesticides reduce and delay the goal of farmers leaving some land. fallow to improve biodiversity.
The bloc has also introduced safeguards to stop Ukrainian imports from flooding the market under a tariff-free scheme introduced after Russia’s 2022 invasion.
The protest was second to farmers in Brussels in recent weeks.
“We are being ignored,” said Marieke Van De Vivere, a farmer from the Ghent region of Belgium. She said that the Ministers “should be reasonable with us, come with us for a working day in the field, or with the horses or the animals, to see that it is not very easy … because of the rules they impose on us “.
Morgan Ody, from the small farmer organization La Via Campesina, said that “it was about income for most farmers. It’s about the fact that we are poor, and we want to live well,” said Ody.
She asked the EU to establish minimum support prices and free trade agreements that make it possible to import cheaper foreign products. “We are not against climate policies. But we know that to make the transition, we need higher prices for products because it costs more to produce them in an ecological way,” she said.
Farmers also protested on Monday in Madrid, blowing whistles, ringing cowbells and beating drums as they demanded the EU cut red tape and release part of the CAP. “The new CAP is destroying our lives,” said Juan Pedro Laguna, 46.
Roberto Rodriguez, who grows corn and beets in the central province of Avila, said it was “impossible to abide by these rules, they want us to work in the field during the day and deal with paperwork at night – we are sick of the bureaucracy. “.
Polish farmers protesting EU regulations and cheap food imports from Ukraine blocked a motorway at a busy border crossing with Germany on Monday and plan to protest in the Polish capital, Warsaw, on Tuesday.
Adrian Wawrzyniak, spokesman for the Solidarity farmers’ association, said that as far as he knew “German farmers are also on the German side – the crossing is blocked from both sides. This is an expression of solidarity.”
Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said on Monday that farmers’ problems needed to be solved at EU level. “Poland is the first country in the EU [on the border with Ukraine]but in fact it is a problem of the EU as a whole, of EU agriculture as a whole, and it should be taken into account in this context,” he told a press conference.
