What I saw at the EU farmer's protest

Note: This report was published at The European Conservative on February 3. The EU farmer’s protest took place on February 1—I posted photos and videos from the protest on X at the time, if anyone is interested. My previous Substack on the farmer’s protests can be read here.

On Wednesday night, hundreds of tractors poured into Brussels down the swanky main drag pulling manure spreaders and wagons past luxury shops like Balenciaga and others never before seen through the window of a John Deere cab. The roar of engines, police sirens, and helicopters was ear-splitting. Tractors had been arriving all week, 1,300 in total, setting up camp in the blocks around the European Union buildings. By morning, the entire city centre was gridlocked, traffic was snarled onto side streets, and tractors were packed nose-to-hitch for kilometres. One farmer set up a pen in the middle of the street, laid down straw, and let two bulls out so that the bug-eyed city residents could meet a cow.

The farmers were mostly Belgian, joined by French reinforcements and others from across the continent (a roll call taken from the trailer stage in front of the parliament later that morning under a huge banner reading “Free the Farmers! Stop Free Trade!” had Dutch, German, and Italian farmers bellowing their presence). The crowd had gathered to put a stop to what they call the “spaghetti of regulations to the point of absurdity” slowly strangling their sector and killing their way of life, including mandatory dates for when to sow crops as well as the Nature Restoration Act, which requires setting aside farmland for reforestation. By 10 a.m., the crowd was already simmering and crates of Jupiter beer were emptying rapidly.

A bonfire in the street / photo by Jonathan Van Maren

The crowd in the Place du Luxembourg did not look like activists. Most wore boots, puffy vests, and toques, with stubbly faces and roughened hands. It is somehow unsettling to see farmers protesting. “Do you know how badly you have to screw up to get people like this into the streets?” one of my colleagues observed. He was right. It must have cost a fortune to drive that vast army of farm equipment into the heart of Brussels—many had to drive for hours. The very nature of the protest highlighted the fact that the farmers believe their backs are against the wall. As one said, it isn’t about one specific regulation; it is the fact that each is designed to tighten the noose just a bit more—slow strangulation by red tape.

The square looked like a war zone. A load of firewood was dumped onto the grass; another trailer had deposited a load of car tires. Huge fires belching pungent pillars of black smoke were burning on the street and next to the John Cockerill monument. A statue from 1871 had been pulled down and lay next to a tire fire, partially blackened. The entrances to the EU were blocked by a wall of barricades, razor wire, and riot police (standing beneath a sign advising the farmers to “USE YOUR VOTE”). Wallonian country boys had been trying out their throwing arms, pitching scores of eggs at the cops and splattering them against the grey walls, which featured a slick yellow varnish of yolk and shattered shells by the day’s end.

A long yellow banner unfurled next to the orange dump loader full of tires summed up the prevailing sentiment: “THIS IS NOT THE EUROPE WE WANT.” The farmers say that the survival of their intergenerational way of life is a stake, and they didn’t show up to lobby and submit petitions—they came to send a message, seething, scared, and spoiling for a fight. 

Smoke filling Place du Luxembourg / photo by Jonathon Van Maren

It started around 11 a.m. Glassy-eyed farm kids, flushed with beer and fuelled by the quiet fury of their elders, hurled the first wave of beer bottles over the barricades, sending a spray of broken glass across the paving stones around the police. Yellow beer crates followed; shields went up; there were barked orders and hoarse shouts from the crowd. One ran towards the wire with a tire tied to a rope to pull down the fence; he got hammered into a corner by firehoses, and a second volley of bottles and angry jeers followed. Tires and garbage were piled around the tree in front of parliament and set ablaze; the hoses were redirected, but the rubber burned too hot, and the trunk blackened and began weeping white sap. The wind changed, and several side streets filled with eye-watering smoke, making it impossible to see and difficult to breathe. Watching the older farmers look on as their sons boiled by the barricades, it struck me that the license they were granting the young was another indication of their desperation. 

The standoff was futile; impotent rage was being vented against blue-collar cops because they were between the farmers and those responsible for the policies creating their plight. But the police were the only human representatives of the state available as a target, and so they bore the brunt. When I managed to get close to the barricades with a clutch of journalists, I realized, to my shock, that most of the riot police I could see were young women. The misty masks were beaded with hot breath, but behind several of them were pretty blond girls, one very wide-eyed. The contrast between the female officers and the angry youths and heavy-set farmers with five o’clock shadows was stark, and there was something pathetic about the EU brass having young women protect them.

Police behind a barricade and barbed wire / photo by Jonathon Van Maren

By 1 p.m., the tension at the barricades eased as the beer wore off, energy flagged, and the mid-afternoon slump hit. The Beer Factory bistro, a favorite of EU staffers, filled up with farmers packed shoulder to shoulder ordering food and tables of beer in plastic cups to reclaim momentum. One fellow turned on the TV and the restaurant swivelled. The news stations were all carrying live coverage of what was unfolding outside the windows; loud cheers and laughter erupted. There was backslapping and jokes and grim satisfaction. Outside, the cobblestones resembled barn floors, mired with stringy wet hay, watery manure from the tractor treads, and ash from the fires, a constant staccato of deafening fireworks giving the whole thing a revolutionary air.

By 4 p.m., the crowd in front of the barricade had built up again, with young men darting in and out of range of the firehoses, taunting the cops. More bottles were sent over along with a clattering of cans. One stood, two fingers raised at the EU, quivering in a crossfire of water as he gulped and bellowed defiance. The mood caught, objects were hurled, and a mattress set ablaze. A man in a mask—the only one I saw—began prying up cobblestones. He got angry glares and rebukes from the surrounding farmers and a tongue-lashing from one woman; he left them. One, however, ended up in the hands of a kid with braces who couldn’t have been more than fourteen; dashing too close to the barricade to fling it, he caught a full face of pepper spray and went down howling, clutching at his eyes.

Protestor shortly after being doused in pepper spray / photo by Jonathon Van Maren

The man who ran to drag him out got sprayed, too; they were swiftly surrounded by demonstrators who grabbed their arms and doused their faces with water bottles. They were taken to The Beer Factory, where a disconcerted waiter brought milk and more water. The boy wanted to head right back but was restrained; one farmer waded to the front of the crowd and angrily yelled at them to back up. Bottles were one thing; bricks were another. The crowd grumbled and glared but restricted their missiles to the verbal. Tractors started honking and flashing as they attempted to navigate out of the packed streets to head for home, several dumping loads of silage as parting gifts. The crowd and the fires subsided to a smolder as the streets emptied with a receding roar of horsepower.

By 7 p.m. it was over. A handful of young men too brazen or buzzed to let go of the day lingered and stoked the fires with spare tires near the statue and in front of The Beer Factory, and the flickering orange glow danced weirdly against the buildings as the cops came around the barricades and moved into the square. Wailing sirens replaced the honking tractors as paddy wagons streamed in to pick off the stragglers and firetrucks doused the flames and glowing haybales. Cleanup crews arrived. One young woman in riot gear, her mask off now and attempting to look fierce, stood blocking the entrance, warding off curious pedestrians leaving work and seeking the source of the noise that had been the muffled soundtrack to their day in the office. Signs still littered the ground; one read “European Union, But Not Like This!”; another, “Insects Will Never Make It Onto Italian Plates!”

The Brussels farmers’ protest was merely one front in the peasants’ revolt unfolding right across Europe. In France, farmers emptied manure spreaders onto ancient buildings and blasted police cars with dung; elsewhere in Belgium, farmers blocked port crossings in Antwerp, briefly halting shipping. Dutch tractor convoys are currently clogging highways, blocking the Belgian border; Portuguese farmers are cutting off roads into Spain. Farmer protests have also erupted in Greece, Germany, Poland, and elsewhere. A sign hoisted by farmers on Thursday in Brussels summed it up: “We are Europe!” The bureaucrats inside the EU buildings a few hundred yards away beg to differ: they fervently believe that they are Europe. Now, the country has come to the cities to drive a spoke through the wheel of what had seemed like an inexorable machine—until now.

Whether the future of Europe will be ‘green’ is still in question; that the future will be conflict is certain.