Stink of manure permeates EU capital amid ongoing battles between protesting farmers and cops.
Farmers across several EU countries have been protesting EU environmental policies | Alessandro Ford/POLITICO
BRUSSELS — The stench of manure, burning tires and teargas pervaded downtown Brussels on Monday as protesting farmers locked down the city’s European Quarter, assaulting police barricades as they demonstrate against the EU’s green policies, price pressures and import competition.
A huge column of tractors paraded down the Rue de la Loi, a major thoroughfare, making their way towards the Schuman roundabout — close to where EU farm ministers were meeting under heavy guard by Belgian police.
In chaotic scenes, law enforcement put up barbed wire and anti-tank obstacles outside EU institutions, repelling the rowdy crowd with water cannons. Protesters set fire to tires, dumped manure on the street, shot flares at police and rammed their trucks into road blocks
Belgian and Italian unions brought with them a laundry list of complaints, from falling revenues and excessive environmental burdens, to being underpaid by food companies and undercut by foreign goods. These were the same issues that brought farmers into Brussels three weeks ago, when they toppled a statue and hurled eggs at the European Parliament.
“We’re here today because we want genuine agriculture and food laws,” said Mark Wulfrancke, policy officer of the Flemish General Farmers’ Syndicate (Algemeen Boerensyndicaat). “At the national level, politicians always point at [the EU] — we’re here so that they can’t do that anymore.”
Some came with tight talking points: “Free trade agreements, [falling] revenues and a simpler Common Agricultural Policy,” yelled Marianne Streel, President of the Walloon Federation of Agriculture, over the blare of horns.
Ukrainian grain, chicken and sugar imports are a common concern, as is the fear of being swamped by cheap South American beef should the EU conclude a trade deal with the Mercosur countries.
Protests have flared across Europe as farmers air similar grievances. Polish farmers are blockading the Ukrainian border and French farmers last week occupied the headquarters of dairy multinational Lactalis and attacked a milk truck in protest at the prices the company pays.
Left behind
Other protests spoke more expansively about the feeling of being left behind. “Being a farmer means playing the stock market … There’s an enormous number of young people here today because we’re asking questions about our future,” said France Kallen, a 25-year-old teacher at an agronomy school for teenagers in Wallonia.
“I’ve worked all my life on my parents’ farm and I’ve never been paid because we just don’t earn enough money,” she told POLITICO, as her students giggled in the background, dodging black plumes of smoke from burning rubber.
There is also anger that major farming unions and big agri-business groups are playing the system — cashing in on farm subsidies while using their lobbying power to escape enforcement of environmental and labour standards — while smallholders bear the brunt of the EU’s Green Deal reforms.
“Those big actors — who produce cheaply at a great cost to environmental, social, animal and labour welfare — have doubled down on the neo-liberal approach and demand the withdrawal of environmental measures of the Green Deal,” said Alisha Sesum, from the Via Campesina movement of small farmers that also joined Monday’s protest.
“This doesn’t protect the interests of farmers on the ground facing environmental worries daily, nor does it bring about better or brighter prospects for farmers in the future, regardless of their politics.”
Many protesters didn’t seem to know why they were there, though. Groups of youngsters roamed up and down Rue de la Loi, tossing firecrackers at buildings and swilling bottles of Jupiler beer. “It’s harder for us and that’s not fair,” said 22-year-old Claude, watching a tractor dump straw onto the bonfire with his friends.
Several men wearing patches of the Federation of Young Farmers (FJA) happily admitted to having started the fire, before retracting their statement when they realized they were talking to a POLITICO journalist.
“This lot, they’re driving these tractors like they’re mini coopers,” grumbled an older representative of Italy’s Coldiretti union, dodging a John Deere vehicle. A few hundred metres away, in the office of Copa-Cogeca, Europe’s largest farm lobby, Italian union leaders had a similar message for the protestors.
“It’s easy to go into the street with your tractors. It’s harder to get results,” said Massimiliano Giansanti, President of Confagricoltura. Christiane Lambert, the president of Copa, warned that while “this rage needs to be expressed … it’s our job to channel it properly.”
Police warned Brussels residents to use public transport Monday as they set up a blockade in the area around Rue de la Loi. The metro stations Schuman and Maalbeek were shut down.
The blockades are set to last until approximately 4 p.m.
Additional reporting by Bartosz Brzeziński. This story has been updated to correct the affiliation of Marianne Streel of the Walloon Federation of Agriculture.
Source: Politico
