Farmer protests spread across Europe ahead of EU summit
French and Belgian farmers angry about rising costs, EU environmental policies and cheap food imports blocked highways and access roads to a major container port on Tuesday as the protests spread across Europe.
In France, farmers who have been protesting for more than two weeks stepped up their pressure on the government by blocking highways with tractors near Paris and setting bales of hay ablaze to partly block access to Toulouse airport.
“Whatever happens, we are determined to go to the end,” farmer Jean-Baptiste Bongard said as crowds of farmers huddled together around small fires on a highway in Jossigny, near Paris, that was blocked by the tractors.
“If the movement needs to last a month, then it will last a month.”
In Belgium, where protests have been inspired by those in neighbouring France, farmers blocked access roads to the Zeebrugge container port.
Farmers organising the protest said they planned to bar access to the North Sea port, the country’s secondlargest, for at least 36 hours. They targeted it because they said it received economic support at the expense of farmers.
Belgian farmers also blocked a square in central Brussels, saying they would stay put until at least today, when EU leaders meet in the city for a summit.
Spanish farmers said they would join the movement and organise protests this month.
The French protests follow similar action in other European countries, including Germany and Poland, ahead of European Parliament elections in June in which the far right, for whom farmers represent a growing constituency, is seen making gains.
Farmers say they are not being paid enough, are choked by excessive environmental regulation and face unfair competition from cheap imports.
“The farmers are desperate, really desperate,” Mark Wulfrancke, from Belgium’s Algemeen Boerensyndicaat, said.
“We want respect from our government ... The only way to show that respect is to make a policy that is farmer friendly.”
In France, the protests increased in intensity , leading up to the EU summit, when they hope their action and those of other farmers in Europe will grab the attention of the politicians focused on aid for Ukraine and the bloc’s budget.
While the farmers’ crisis is not officially on the agenda, French President Emmanuel Macron said he would discuss it with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and government leaders.
Much of the bloc’s agricultural rules, hefty subsidies and import rules are decided in Brussels jointly by member states and the European Parliament, alongside the executive European Commission.
“We need to have a European debate,” Macron said.
Wary of protests escalating, the French government has dropped plans to gradually reduce subsidies on agricultural diesel and promised to ease environmental regulations.
“We’ve asked (the EU) for very concrete things for our farmers,” Macron said, calling in particular to ensure that imported produce meets European standards.
Imports from Ukraine, on which the EU has waived quotas and duties since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, and renewed negotiations to conclude the Mercosur trade deal with South American countries have fanned farmers’ discontent about unfair competition in sugar, grain and meat.
France wants “to have clear measures on imports from Ukraine because today we have in volume and quality things that are destabilising the European market, whether chicken or cereals”, Macron said.
The European Commission said on Tuesday it was continuing to pursue trade talks with the Mercosur bloc.
Several other EU members back the deal, which would be the largest trade agreement for the bloc in terms of tariff reduction and the EU strategy of trade diversification.