Days before elections across European Union countries, hundreds of farmers traveled to Brussels from across Europe on Tuesday to protest EU green policies.
About 500 tractors assembled at the Atomium monument on the city outskirts, according to police. Around 1,200 demonstrators gathered, organized by the Dutch group Farmers Defense Force. Farmers traveled from the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, and Germany.
“We want Europe to put the Green Deal away because it’s not realistic,” said Bart Dickens, president of Farmers Defense Force’s Belgian branch.
Recently, there have been a series of protests by farmers that have disrupted activity in Brussels. As of mid-afternoon Tuesday, there were no reports of vehicles blocking traffic.
There have been disruptions at a parallel protest in Poland, where farmers have blocked a border crossing to Ukraine to show solidarity for the demonstration in Brussels, according to police. Solidarity and the All Poland Alliance, OPZZ, the two largest farming unions in Poland, have said they were unaware of the protests.
“This protest will last three days…trucks traveling from Ukraine are blocked and 12 trucks are allowed to leave Poland between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.,” said police spokesperson Malgorzata Pawlowska.
The Farmers Defense Force movement, which has focused on farmer grievances as the June polls approach, is considered close to the far-right. There were about a dozen speakers, including several hard-right figures from Poland’s nationalist Law and Justic and the Flemish Vlaams Belang. Coordination Rurale, the right-leaning farmers union in France, protested the environmental demands in the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, over-regulation, and free-trade deals.
Protests by farmers in Brussels earlier this year led to favorable concessions for the farmers.
Not all groups are participating in the current demonstration. Copa-Cogeca, the mainstream pan-European farming group, did not attend, despite being at prior protests. The farming association La Via Campesina also did not participate.
“We reject this attempt by small groups that have no concrete proposals to address farmers’ issues to hijack farmer concerns to push their own party interests,” said a spokesperson for Via Campesina.
The demonstrators have been given a specific edge of Brussels for their protest, and police have been deployed to block the farmers from entering the heart of the city.
