Chaos broke out in central Brussels on Monday, where angry farmers blocked traffic with dozens of tractors, set fire to bales of rubber and straw, and police intervened with water cannons near where EU agriculture ministers were meeting, Reuters reported.

Farmers set fire to piles of old tires in protest, demanding action from the EU on a range of issues affecting them, from cheap supermarket prices to the EU bloc’s free trade deals, as agriculture ministers met to discuss the crisis in the sector, the News said. ro.

More than 100 tractors were parked around the headquarters of the European Union institutions, not far from the isolated zone where the ministers arrived for the meeting.

To extinguish the flames, riot police used water cannons.

Farmers across Europe staged weeks of protests to call on politicians to take action on a range of pressures they say the sector is under, from cheap supermarket prices to cheap imports undermining local producers and strict EU environmental standards.

What farmers complain about

Local complaints are different. But Morgan Audi, general coordinator of the agricultural organization La Via Campesina, said that for most farmers, “it’s a question of income. The fact is that we are poor and we want to provide ourselves with a decent life,” Odi told Reuters.

Audy, herself a farmer from Brittany, France, called on the EU to set minimum support prices and withdraw from free trade agreements that allow cheaper foreign products to be imported.

“We are not against climate policy. But we know that in order to make the transition, we need higher prices for products, because it costs more to produce environmentally,” she explained.

Among the demands is an end to free trade agreements that farmers say have made it cheaper to import from countries where producers face less stringent environmental standards than the EU.

A stage set up at the site of Monday’s protest was covered with a sign reading “Stop EU Mercosur” – a reference to ongoing negotiations on the EU’s trade deal with the South American group of countries in the Mercosur organization.

The European Commission stated that the conditions that would allow the EU to sign an agreement with MERCOSUR were not fulfilled. He called for strengthening the guarantees of environmental standards in the agreement.

Measures taken by the EU

Agriculture ministers were due to discuss a new set of EU proposals to reduce pressure on farmers, including reducing farm inspections and the possibility of exempting small farms from certain environmental standards.

“Farmers need to be paid for what they do… There are aspects of the Green Deal that are demanded of farmers and not rewarded. This is the essence of the problem,” said Belgian Agriculture Minister David Clarinval, referring to the EU’s environmental requirements.

The EU has already weakened part of its flagship environmental policy, the Green Deal, in response to weeks of protests by angry farmers. The EU has removed the target for reducing agricultural emissions from its 2040 climate roadmap.

He also withdrew the pesticide reduction law and postponed a target that required farmers to keep some land fallow to improve biodiversity.