Hundreds of tractors from across Europe rolled into Brussels in a protest spearheaded by hardline farmers’ groups against EU green policies, days before elections across the bloc.
Police said around 500 of the vehicles had gathered near the Atomium monument on the city outskirts, rallying to a call by the Dutch-founded group Farmers Defence Force (FDF), with around 1,200 demonstrators present.
It was the latest in a string of farmer protests that have brought Brussels to a halt several times in recent months.
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This time around, the farmers were given permission to gather only in a specific area on the edge of Brussels – but a “symbolic” dozen were allowed to roll under police escort into the capital’s European district, to honk their horns outside the EU parliament.
The FDF movement is seen as close to the far right, which has widely seized on farmer grievances ahead of the 6-9 June EU Parliament election.
The farmers’ mainstream pan-European group Copa-Cogeca, present in previous protests, stayed away from the event.
Several hard-right figures – including the leader of Poland’s nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, Jarosław Kaczyński, and members of the Flemish Vlaams Belang – were among the day’s speakers.
France’s right-leaning Coordination Rurale farmers union said it was taking part to protest the environmental demands of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, as well as over-regulation and free-trade deals it said were “distorting competition”.
“They keep on asking us for more, to use less land and yet to produce more, and more cheaply,” Veronique Le Floc’h, the French organisation’s leader, told AFP.
“It’s not sustainable,” she said.
Past farmer protests in Brussels, part of a months-long movement that roiled Europe early this year, have led to significant concessions in their favour, including a rollback of eco-friendly requirements to qualify for EU subsidies.
In southeast Poland, meanwhile, a group of around 30 farmers staged a blockade at the Ukrainian border “in solidarity with the demonstrators in Brussels”, according to local officials.
The protest in Hrebenne, intended to last for a week, follows months of on-off blockades by Polish truckers and farmers protesting what they call unfair competition from Ukrainians.
