Today, not only an EU summit is taking place in the Belgian capital, where disgruntled farmers are holding a large-scale demonstration, demanding support and respect for themselves and their work.
In recent days, Belgian producers also joined the wave of protests that started across Europe due to the dissatisfaction of agricultural workers. The Belgian farmers organized a large-scale demonstration for Thursday, which was timed just in time for the EU summit.
"It is thus an unfair competition that we in Europe have to meet the standards. We are not against these standards as long as they pay us, but if we then import products that do not meet them and flood the European agricultural market with them, it is not logical," said a farmer in Brussels.
The protesters spent the night in a park near the European Parliament building, waiting for more farmers to come to them on Thursday.
"We would like there to be a kind of continuity in European decisions. They want to see the Green Deal through to try to improve the climate and the environmental condition of our planet. But as a result of this package, 4 percent of our cropland in Wallonia is reclassified as non-cropland, in other words, we don't grow crops on it. We cannot accept this, as this 4 percent will eventually be replaced by what is imported from the other side of the planet. (…) This is because it is harmful to the environment, if only because of the transport. Sometimes there is no logical explanation for the behavior of the European Union. Especially when they want to make agreements with Mercosur to import agricultural products that just arrived from America," said a farmer.
"We are human beings, we feed the population, we do our own thing, it's a very difficult job from the point of view of the family and they don't recognize how much we are worth in terms of the Maslow pyramid," opined a housewife, who added:
"People's first physiological need is to eat and drink. And we serve this need, and we don't want to depend on government aid, we want to be recognized fairly, according to our worth. That's why we're here today to demonstrate peacefully, we don't want to break anything, we really want to be heard. We want them to support and help us".
The speaker summed up their expectations as "we don't need blabla, we want consequences written on paper".
In recent weeks, farmers have also demonstrated in Germany, France, Italy, Romania and Spain, blocked roads, and called attention to their difficult situation with blockades. Demonstrations have also started in Belgium in recent days, and a large-scale movement was organized in Brussels for Thursday, just in time for the summit meeting of EU heads of state and government. The first protesters arrived in the Belgian capital already on Wednesday evening, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also met them.
Cover image: The inscription proclaims: We feed you, but we perish in it
Source: Magyar Nemzet/Miksa Manninger
