Fires and a toppled statue: Farmers clash with
police by EU Parliament
Flemish farmers drink morning beers on Place du
Luxembourg as food producers rage about green tape from Brussels.
FEBRUARY 1,
2024 12:27 PM CET
BY EDDY
WAX, ELENA GIORDANO AND PAULA ANDRÉS
BRUSSELS —
Police fired water at protesting farmers who clogged the streets of Brussels
with tractors, set bonfires and toppled a statue in front of the European
Parliament on Thursday.
As EU heads
of government met nearby in the capital, farmers from Belgium, Italy and Spain
arrived at Place du Luxembourg to protest over their economic plight, which
they say is being worsened by ever-stricter green rules handed down by
Brussels.
Clouds of
black smoke blanketed the normally quiet square, where farmers toppled one of
the five statues from a plinth of the central statue of British 19th century
industrialist John Cockerill.
To the
piercing sound of explosions and tractor horns, farmers with muddy faces and
dirty boots hurled insults at armed police who erected a barbed-wire barrier in
front of the Parliament. Nearby farmers steadily added to a large bonfire,
several of which burned across the square, and police fired a wobbly water hose
in their direction.
The rowdy
gathering followed weeks of protests across Europe by farmers who complain that
the EU is tying them up with green bureaucracy as they struggle with falling
incomes, high costs, and competition from cheap imports. Beyond the European
capital, farmers in France seized and dumped Spanish produce, and blocked
highways in Italy and Greece.
A Flemish
farmer who refused to give his name said the "Irish" and "some
French" farmers had pushed over the statue, the head of which was slowly
roasting in one of the bonfires. Straw covered the streets and the grass on the
square had been churned into a muddy mulch.
Italians
from farmers' lobby Coldiretti chanted: "This is not the Europe we
want" and sang a call and response of, "No farmers! No food!"
European
Parliament President Roberta Metsola sent a message to the farmers from the
European Council meeting: “We see you, we hear you. If you want your voice to
be heard, make it heard also in June, when you vote for the European Parliament
elections," she said.
The Maltese
lawmaker argued that the farmers’ protests show that “we need to listen
more" to some sectors of society before the election.
Taking a
tougher line, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo condemned the toppling
of the statue as "totally wrong."
"We
need to get away from the clash between agriculture and industry," he
posted on X. "Farmers and entrepreneurs are not opposites. We need both
for a strong and sustainable economy."
Border trouble
Protests
around Europe have escalated too, with French farmers resorting to direct
action to make themselves heard.
Seventy-nine
farmers were arrested on Wednesday after breaking into the country’s largest
wholesale food market on the outskirts of Paris. In the Drôme region, south of
Lyon, farmers blockading the highway have stopped and emptied trucks coming
from Spain and Italy in order, they say, to give away the food to charitable
organizations.
“We want to
show that goods which could be produced in France are being imported,” Vladimir
Gauthier, a local member of the Young Farmers movement, told POLITICO.
Italian
farmers have joined their counterparts across Europe, blocking motorways,
historic centers and wholesale vegetable markets from Calabria to Lombardy,
with their tractors. And in Greece, farmers converged on the northern city of
Thessaloniki.
"There
is no liquidity at the moment, the cost of production is exorbitant,” Efthimis
Mamekas, a farmer from Trikala, told state TV. “Most of Greece is rural
families, they must understand us."
Do not approach
In
Brussels, police with handguns and riot shields guarded the EU assembly, where
officials were warned not to attend due to the unrest. "It is recommended
to telework," staff were told in an email seen by POLITICO. "It is
strongly recommended not to approach the demonstrations and not to take
photos," the institution informed them in another email.
The
center-right European People's Party canceled a meeting of its heads of
government and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen due to
security concerns created by the protests.
Despite the
chaotic scenes, there was a festive atmosphere at the protest. A woman from a
Belgian workers' union joked: "In my old age, I'm going to find an Italian
farmer."
Flemish
farmers sat near the bonfire where the fallen statute was lying, drinking
Jupiler beers, laughing and sitting on metal chairs taken from nearby cafés.
But it also
had a darker edge.
A Flemish
farmer, who gave his family name as Brecht, said he was waiting for a permit to
grow organic green table grapes, said: "I'm a victim of the regulation
soup and the tyranny coming from the ivory towers."
He admitted
he didn't know much about the EU's Green Deal, a raft of regulatory measures to
make the Continent climate-neutral by 2050, which has given exemptions to
agriculture. Holding an EU flag, he said that he had perched a placard on the
statue of Cockerill that says: "People of Europe say no to
despotism."
Farmers
across Europe hope to secure concessions from EU governments. The European
Commission announced Wednesday a one-year pause to the requirement for farmers
to leave a small section of land unplanted on their farms, one of the EU's
requirements for farmers to receive subsidies under the giant Common
Agricultural Policy.
The farmers
present were as politically diverse as the MEPs who sit inside the chamber.
Left-leaning farmers from the umbrella organization Via Campesina protested
against the EU's liberal trade policy and warned about the rise of the
far-right across Europe. Traditional farmers’ lobbies such as ASAJA from Spain
were also out in force.
French
Green MEP Benoît Biteau said he wanted the EU to put a stop to negotiations on
the giant Mercosur trade deal. "We hope that [French President Emmanuel
Macron] will not only ask for postponement until the election, but for true
stop in the negotiation,” said Biteau, who is himself a farmer in southwest
France.
Far-left
MEPs like Spain’s Manu Pineda and far-right MEPs like Estonia’s Jaak Madison
also took to the square to be filmed in front of the bonfires.
Not all of
the farmers who turned out in Brussels wanted to lay bonfires or trash
monuments: Camille Cossement, a 24-year-old Belgian dairy farmer, said she felt
out of place but acknowledged that “problems are common for everyone.”
As cameras
captured images of the fires and vandalism, Cossement said it was time to
restore the dignity of her profession. "Nowadays, farming is not really a
job that makes you human,” she said. “Human dignity is kind of lost in all of
this.”
Additional
reporting by Victor Goury-Laffont in Paris, Hannah Roberts in Rome and Nektaria
Stamouli in Athens.
This story
has been updated.
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