Farmers Block Main Roads in Brussels
Sudan Events – Sumaya Sayed
Hundreds of European farmers driving heavy-duty tractors on Thursday blocked major thoroughfares in Brussels, bent on getting their complaints about excessive costs, rules and bureaucracy heard by EU leaders convening for a summit there.
The farmers also pushed their way onto the agenda at Thursday’s EU summit, which was supposed to be laser-focused on providing financial aid to Ukraine for its war against Russia.
Leaders managed to quickly seal a deal on giving the war-torn country a new 50-billion-euro ($54 billion) support package — but Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said the farmers’ demands needed to be addressed.
Similar actions have occurred across the bloc for most of the week, including in France, where police arrested more than 90 protesters who forced their way into Europe’s biggest food market south of Paris on Wednesday.
Protesting farmers prepared to encircle Paris with traffic-snarling barricades for a second day Tuesday, using hundreds of lumbering tractors and mounds of hay bales to block highways leading to France’s capital to pressure the government over the future of their industry, which has been shaken by repercussions of the Ukraine war.
