“This Is Not the Europe We Want”: Farmers Bring the Fight to EU’s Front Door
1st February 2024
Protesting farmers were met by riot police with fire hoses just metres from the European Parliament on Thursday, as they tried to grab the attention of the European Council by expressing their collective outrage at EU green policies threatening their livelihood.
In an unusually rowdy protest, even by Brussels standards, tyre fires and tractor blockades greeted European leaders as a transnational coalition of farming groups took to the streets. They are angered by EU green policies—including decrees forcing active farmland to go fallow, restricting the use of fertiliser, and limiting permitted amount of livestock—as well as national edicts such as reduced subsidies on diesel fuel—that are direct results of the EU’s Net Zero commitments.
In remarks to The European Conservative, French MEP Thierry Mariani (Rassemblement National-ID) blamed the uproar on the wishes of EU elites to pursue free trade deals while suffocating native European industry with “Soviet-style administration of agriculture,” as well as relentlessly pursuing Ukrainian integration into EU’s common agricultural policy (CAP).
The peasants are still revolting.