In a field far from the city centre of Brussels and the European institutions, tractors and farmers gathered once again to protest against European environmental regulations, with demonstrators coming from Poland, the Netherlands and France.
The organisation, Force for the Defence of Farmers, expected between 15,000 and 20,000 people to attend , but in the end there were around 2,000. According to the Belgian police, some 500 tractors gathered in the vicinity of the famous Atomium.
One of the possible reasons for this was the support of politicians and extreme right-wing groups. Sieta van Keimpema, one of the spokespersons denies this. «This is a lie that we have heard over and over again,» she says. She argues that the whole thing was organised and financed by her agricultural group, which had demanded participants not to behave violently and not to drink alcohol. «There is no politics in this protest and there is nothing extremist about it except people lying,» van Keimpema defends.
But the list of speakers shows a different picture with speeches by politicians from far-right parties such as the Flemish Vlaams Belang or the Polish PiS. The EU’s main farmers’ organisation, Copa-Cogeca, has dissociated itself from the event and claims that none of its members took part in it.
For the European Greens this is also a cause for concern and they have defended it in a press release issued on Tuesday morning. «The far right has been feeding farmers the lie that Europe, and the Green Pact, is to blame for their hardship,» said the party’s lead candidate and MEP Bas Eickhout.
Recently, in the midst of agricultural protests, the European Commission lowered the environmental demands of the European Green Pact and withdrew a new law that was to reduce the use of pesticides in the sector. But for farmers «it’s not enough,» explains French Rural Coordination Secretary General Christian Convers. «There have been some small changes that we are obliged to point out, but for the moment, at this stage, they don’t make any economic sense.
