Dutch farmers heading to protest against European climate policy in Brussels

Angry farmers from the Netherlands and a dozen other EU countries are heading to Brussels on the eve of the European elections. They want to force an end to restrictive European climate and environmental regulations. The first Dutch farmers are on their way. Organizers promised that this time, the protest would remain peaceful.

With approximately 25 tractors and truck tractors, Dutch farmers left a meeting point in Schaijk, Noord-Brabant, at around 1:30 a.m. They first headed to Someren to collect colleagues waiting there and then continued to the border crossing at Valkenswaard. Tractors gathering in Wagenberg, near Breda, set out a few hours later.

“We want to shake citizens awake before the elections so that they vote in the right direction,” said former dairy farmer Marcel Rijkers, who left from Schaijk on his tractor. “We succeeded in that in the provisional elections and the parliamentary elections, and we are now trying to do that.”

Rijkers had hoped that more farmers would participate, but thanks to the drier weather in recent days, farmers in some parts of the Netherlands can return to the fields, he said. “Farmers have also been discouraged by the government, which comes up with new rules every month. They think: just leave it. And, of course, it is also far, 180 kilometers in the dark.

The Wagenberg turnout was much bigger. An ANP reporter counted 200 tractors. Several tractors had protest signs with “no farmers, no future” and texts against the Green Deal, the European climate policy.

The Demonstration starts at noon in the Atomium Park in Brussels. Brussels is bracing itself since multiple farmers’ actions have recently gotten out of hand. This time, however, the farmers are not gathering around the EU administration buildings but on the outskirts of the city. The protest is against the European Union’s agricultural policy.

Organizer Bart Dickens expects thousands of demonstrators with hundreds of tractors. Dickens’ Belgian Farmers Defense Force (FDF), its Dutch sister club, and other more radical farmers’ action groups will take the lead on Tuesday. More moderate farmers’ organizations like LTO, Agractie, and the Belgian Farmers’ Union are not participating. The organizers have determined “not to confront the police,” Dickens said. The police have cordons ready, just in case.