Farmers brought their message of frustration and anger directly to Brussels lawmakers on February 1 by bringing the EU quarter to a standstill.
Men and women from across the bloc burned hay and tyres from early in the morning on Luxembourg Square, in front of the European Parliament, while dozens of tractors blocked the surrounding roads.
Protestors said they were angry and fed up with EU legislation and “bureaucracy” which had reduced profits. They were all the more frustrated, they said, because food imports from outside the EU did not have to comply with the same norms.
“Without us, you can’t eat. No farmers no food. We are very angry,” said Enrico Parisi, youth wing president of the Italian farmers’ association Coldiretti, told Brussels Signal. “We are not against Europe, we’d like to change the culture, the paradigm within Europe.”
One of the main problems he said was “unfair competition”. Non-EU imports “don’t respect our rules”.
Another farmer, a Belgian, handed out a tract to commuters arriving at the Brussels Luxembourg train station, many of them EU officials.
European agriculture had become a world of “more measures, dates, paperwork, constraints, and punitive sanctions,” it read. Europe “permitted ever-growing imports of products that are banned here”. Imported meat was “raised without any notion of animal well-being”.
The EU was capable of imposing anti-dumping measures on Chinese steel, why was it not able to do likewise with these imports?
Riot police with shields blocked access to the European Parliament. There were half-hearted attempts by police to extinguish the burning tyres that divided them from the protestors. Fireworks were thrown in the direction of police though mood was generally festive; some farmers were drinking beer.
