European farmers clashed with police in Brussels overnight sprayed European Union officers with liquid manure in a fresh show of force as the EU’s agriculture ministers met with stakeholders in search of ways to address the protesters’ concerns.
The farmers are protesting the European Union’s capture by Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum which has imposed punishing green agenda policies that are threatening to drive the majority of European farmers out of business.
Brussels police said that approximately 900 tractors entered the city this week, many bearing down on the European Council building where the ministers were meeting.
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9 News reports: Smoke drifted through the air near where police in riot gear sheltered behind concrete barriers and barbed wire, firing tear gas and water cannons at the protesting farmers. Scores of tractors also lined up down main roads leading to the city’s European quarter, snarling traffic and blocking public transport.
A few tractors forced their way through barriers, sending officers scurrying. Belgian Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden urged police to identify “rioters” who hurt people or disobeyed instructions from officers.
“The right to protest is dear to us so it must be used with respect,” she said in a post on X.
At the start of the month, a similar demonstration turned violent with farmers torching hay bales and throwing eggs and firecrackers at police near a summit of EU leaders.
Some of the tractors were draped with signs lamenting what farmers see as the slow death of working the land. “Agriculture. As a child you dream of it, as an adult you die of it,” said one.
“We are getting ignored,” Marieke Van De Vivere, a farmer from the Ghent region in northern Belgium, told The Associated Press.
She invited the ministers “to be reasonable to us, to come with us on a day to work on the field, or with the horses or with the animals, to see that it is not very easy … because of the rules they put on us.”
The protests are the latest in a series of rallies and demonstrations by farmers across Europe.
On Saturday, French President Emmanuel Macron was greeted with boos and whistles at the opening of the Paris Agricultural Fair by farmers who claim that he’s not doing enough to support them. Spain, the Netherlands and Bulgaria have been hit by protests in recent weeks.
The movement, which has gathered pace as political parties campaign for Europe-wide elections between June 6-9, has already produced results. Earlier this month, the EU’s executive branch shelved an anti-pesticide proposal in a concession to the farmers who make up an important voting constituency.
