Farmers hurl eggs at European parliament as leaders meet for summit
Hundreds of protesting farmers have thrown eggs and stones at the European parliament, lighting fires and setting off fireworks to put pressure on a summit of European leaders to do more to help them with taxes, rising costs and environmental rules.
Many farmers had travelled from countries across Europe including France, Germany and Italy after weeks of protests in which tractors have blockaded roads, ports and entrances to cities. Small groups of protesting farmers in Brussels tried to tear down barriers in front of the European parliament but police fired teargas and sprayed water to push them back.
A statue on the square was damaged and main roads in Brussels were blocked by about 1,300 tractors. Security personnel in riot gear stood guard behind barriers where the leaders were meeting at European Council headquarters.
“If you see with how many people we are here today, and if you see it’s all over Europe, so you must have hope,” Kevin Bertens, a Belgian farmer, told Reuters: “You need us. Help us!”
Pierre Sansdrap, a Belgian dairy farmer, told AFP that it was “symbolically important” to protest in Brussels. “To change things, you have to come here,” he said.
Farmers in different European countries have said they are not being paid enough for their produce, are struggling with taxes and green rules and face unfair competition from abroad.
While the farmers’ crisis is not officially on the agenda of the EU summit, which so far has focused on aid to Ukraine, an EU diplomat said the situation with the farmers was likely to be discussed later in the day.
In a sign of the pressure on the French government, the president, Emmanuel Macron, scheduled a one-on-one meeting with the European Commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen.
Macron’s office said the two would discuss “the future of European agriculture”, after farmers’ protests in France.
Moves from the European Commission have failed to calm demonstrations and road blockades that have spread across leading agricultural powers in Europe, especially France and Germany. The EU moves have included a temporary exemption from rules requiring some farmland to be left fallow as well as limits to imports of some Ukrainian agricultural products, on which tariffs were dropped after Russia’s 2022 invasion.
In France hundreds of farmers continued to blockade motorways and some attacked supermarkets. About 200 tractors blocked 50 supermarkets in the Haute-Loire department in southern France criticising what one local farmers’ union called “inappropriate behaviour by major retailers” who “put crazy pressure on our farmers with suffocating margins”.
After several government announcements of help for farmers failed to quell protests, the French prime minister, Gabriel Attal, on Thursday announced a further €150m (£128m) in aid for farmers in need, although the details have yet to be set out.
French farmers have expressed fury at cheap imported food, which is increasingly popular with French shoppers struggling to make ends meet. Attal promised to make life easier for farmers and better protect them at French and EU level. He said this would include France banning cheap imports of products that use a pesticide forbidden in Europe and making sure food labels clearly state if produce is imported.
Attal also said France wanted the EU to issue a “clear” definition of lab-grown meat.
He told a press conference that cultured meat was “not part of what we understand by French diet” and France wanted “clear legislation at the European level to determine what lab-grown meat is”.
In January, agriculture ministers from France, Austria and Italy launched what they called a “culinary alliance” seeking a public debate around lab-grown meat. Synthetic meat cannot be sold in the EU as it has not been authorised by the European Food Safety Authority.
Environmentalists see lab-grown meat as a way of helping cut the greenhouse gas production that is created from livestock farming. Animal rights groups also view it as a way of reducing the death and poor conditions of live animals bred for food.
Marc Fesneau, the French agriculture minister, said there would be a “pause” in France’s national plan for reducing pesticide use. He said the pesticide plan would be “put back on the drawing board … for as long as it takes to re-work some of these aspects, to simplify it”.
Bruno Le Maire, the economy minister, said all major supermarkets would be audited for compliance with a law supposed to ensure fair prices for farmers’ produce.