Farmers clashed with Belgium police on Monday, spraying officers with liquid manure and setting fire to tire piles in a fresh show of force as European Union agriculture ministers met in search of ways to address their concerns. Brussels police said 900 tractors entered the city, many bearing down on the European Council building where the ministers were meeting. Police in riot gear used water cannons to defend the EU's headquarters from behind concrete barriers and barbed wire. The farmers are angry at red tape and competition from cheap imports from countries where the EU's relatively high standards don't apply. They lined up scores of tractors, snarling traffic and blocking public transport.
Some lament what they see as the slow death of working the land. At the start of the month, a similar demonstration turned violent as farmers torched hay bales and threw eggs and firecrackers at police near an EU summit. "We are getting ignored," Marieke Van De Vivere, a farmer from northern Belgium, told the AP. She invited ministers "to be reasonable to us, to come with us on a day to work on the field ... to see that it is not very easy ... because of the rules they put on us." Spain, the Netherlands, and Bulgaria have been hit by recent protests, and the movement has already had results: Earlier this month, the EU's executive branch shelved an anti-pesticide proposal in a concession.
The EU presidency, currently held by Belgium, acknowledged that the farmers' concerns include the burden of respecting environmental policies, a drop in assistance from the bloc's agricultural subsidy system, and the impact of Russia's attacks on Ukraine's grain supplies. "We hear, clearly, their complaints," said David Clarinval, Belgium's agriculture minister. Still, "we can understand that some are in difficult circumstances, but aggression has never been a source for solutions." Irish Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue said the EU should ensure policies are "straightforward, that they're proportionate and they're as simple as possible for farmers to implement. We do respect the massively important work that farmers carry out every day."
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