BRUSSELS: Farmers set fire to piles of old tires in Brussels on Monday in protest to demand EU action on issues ranging from cheap supermarket prices to free trade deals, as agriculture ministers met to discuss the crisis in the sector. Riot police extinguished the flames with a water cannon. More than 100 tractors were parked around the headquarters of the European Union institutions, not far from the cordoned off area where the ministers arrived for their meetings.
Farmers across Europe have staged weeks of protests to demand action from politicians on a range of pressures they say the sector is under – from cheap supermarket prices to cheap imports undercutting local producers to tough EU environmental rules . Local complaints vary. But Morgan Ody, general coordinator of the farmers’ organization La Via Campesina, said that for most farmers, “It’s about income.” “It’s about being poor and wanting to make a decent living,” Ody told Reuters.
Ody, herself a farmer from Brittany, France, called on the EU to set minimum support prices and abandon free trade agreements that allow cheaper foreign products to be imported. “We are not against climate policies. But we know that in order to make the transition, we need higher product prices because it is more expensive to produce in an ecological way,” she said. The demands also include an end to free trade agreements, which farmers say have led to cheaper imports from countries where producers face less stringent environmental standards than those in the EU. A stage set up at the site of the protest on Monday was covered with a sign reading “stop EU Mercosur” – a reference to the ongoing negotiations for an EU trade deal with South America’s Mercosur group of countries.
The European Commission has said that the conditions that would allow the EU to sign an agreement with Mercosur have not been met. It sought stronger guarantees on environmental standards in the agreement. Agriculture ministers were set to discuss a new set of EU proposals to ease pressure on farmers – including curbs on farm controls and the possibility of exempting small farms from some environmental standards. “Farmers must be paid for what they do… There are aspects of the Green Deal that are required of farmers that are not rewarded.
That is the heart of the problem,” said Belgian Agriculture Minister David Clarinval, referring to the EU’s environmental requirements. In response to weeks of protests by angry farmers, the EU has already weakened parts of its flagship environmental policy, the Green Deal. The EU scrapped a target to reduce agricultural emissions from its 2040 climate plan. It also withdrew a pesticide restriction law and delayed a target for farmers to leave some land fallow to improve biodiversity.
