Around 500 tractors and more than a thousand farmers demonstrated in a park north of Brussels, days before the European Parliament elections, to ask the European Union to stop pressuring them with measures to of the climate.
A Dutch dairy farmer who joined the demonstration in Brussels said the measures had become “unbearable”.
“ They have increased the burden on farmers so much that they risk simply disappearing “, said Gert Jan Oudijk.
Farmers from Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France and Poland were present, but the main traditional farmers’ unions did not join the demonstration, as it was organized by far-right movements .
Protesting farmers hope they can sweep away the progressive Green Deal climate pact and give farmers back the leeway they have had for so long to decide how they farm the land.
The dissatisfaction mainly concerns the limitation of the use of manure and pesticides, as well as the obligation to preserve virgin natural areas on certain agricultural lands, in the interest of birds and bees and, ultimately, of the the entire population.
A delegation of around twenty tractors was authorized to circulate in the center of Brussels and make a symbolic gesture in front of the European Parliament.
Unlike similar demonstrations organized in Brussels since the start of the year, no clashes took place.
