‘Ursula, we are here!’: Farmers Take Protest Directly to European Parliament in Belgium
Protests expand to include Ireland and Portugal, and complaints about tyrannical green restrictions are a common theme.
You would think that a movement in which the food-growers of an entire continent rising-up in protest against over-regulation and bureaucratic mismanagement would garner more attention by the media than it is currently experiencing.
Demonstrations leave little time, or motivation, for growing crops or raising livestock. This factor could be problematic, especially for both bureaucrats and regular citizens who have enjoyed eating regularly.
However, as the press bitterly clings to the “right wing” exploitation narrative behind this development, the X-stream is regularly carrying updates on these demonstrations that have now expanded beyond Germany.
The last time I checked in on these protests, French farmers were blockading highways.
More recently, farmers in Belgium had surrounded the European Parliament area and had a special message for Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission. I would like to highlight that one of the key areas of complaint is the green rule-making that has hindered the profitability of European agriculturalists.
Hundreds of tractors gathered on Luxembourg Square in the Belgian capital on Thursday.
On the Paris-Brussels motorway, angry farmers wrote in huge yellow letters visible from afar: “Ursula, we are here!”
It was chalked on the road with equal parts defiance and desperation, warning European Commission Ursula von der Leyen not to ignore farmers’ pleas for better prices and less bureaucracy.
The European Union is holding a summit on Thursday – and von der Leyen, or any other EU leader in attendance, will be looking out their windows at the crowd of farmers protesting in the street.
Hundreds of tractors will gather in Luxembourg Square in the Belgian capital on Thursday to call on European leaders to put an end to free trade agreements between the European Union and third countries.
They want a review of agreements such as Mercosur, for imports to be subject to the same rules as European agricultural products, and for the “costly” bureaucracy of agricultural and environmental regulations to be made more flexible and simplified.
It seems like the bureaucrats aren’t heeding the messages the farmers are sending.
🚨BREAKING | As the farmers are fighting for their livelihoods and our freedom outside of the European Parliament in Brussels, the Eurocrats just agreed to send another 50 billion euro to Ukraine.
They laugh at us. They despise us. They hate us. pic.twitter.com/2AvCfOboO8
— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) February 1, 2024
Now the protests are expanding. Legal Insurrection readers may recall my piece on the potential culling of the iconic dairy herds of Ireland.
Not surprisingly, Irish farmers are now demonstrating against the regulatory inanity and senseless government policies.
Again, I will note that unhappiness with green tyranny is one of the critical components of their complaints.
Meanwhile, thousands of farmers turned out at protests across Ireland on Thursday evening. Hundreds of tractors and other large farming vehicles paraded through towns and along motorways across the country.
“Farmers are saying enough is enough. The message is clear. The Government needs to sit down with us and sort out the over-regulation which is driving farmers to the wall,” said Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) president Francie Gorman
The Irish demonstrations were designed to show solidarity with farmers protesting in Germany, France, Belgium and other EU member states.
“They feel they are being regulated out of business by Brussels bureaucrats and Department of Agriculture officials who are far removed from the reality of day-to-day farming,” said Mr Gorman. “Irish farmers are pro-EU, but there is mounting frustration about the impact of EU policy on European farmers, and its implementation here in Ireland.”
Arriving at a summit overshadowed by the protests, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told reporters he understood “the pressures that our farmers are under, whether it’s increased energy costs, fertiliser costs and new environmental regulations”.
Cork City this evening. Irish Farmers showing their solidarity with EU Protests 🚜 🧑🌾 What are your thoughts on this? #cork #farmers
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.#protest #irishfarmers #ireland #corkdaily #irish #solidarity #IFA #EnoughIsEnough pic.twitter.com/mu4HtutWQn— Cork Daily (@CorkDaily) February 1, 2024
The list of countries with protests on the European continent keeps growing. And, I stress, over-regulation of their livelihoods is one of the over-arching themes here.
The movement, triggered by concerns over low wages, heavy regulation and cheap imports, has involved farmers from Spain, Italy, Germany, Romania and Greece calling for action.
Lines of tractors rolled menacingly across a residential street in Poland and across a German bridge, while farming protesters in Italy burned spectacular nighttime fires by stone statues.
UPDATE 🚜
Countries that have now joined the farmers protest:
Netherlands 🇳🇱
Scotland 🏴
France 🇫🇷
Germany 🇩🇪
Poland 🇵🇱
Lithuania 🇱🇹
Romania 🇷🇴
Belgium 🇧🇪
Greece 🇬🇷
Italy 🇮🇹
Portugal 🇵🇹
Ireland 🇮🇪This is historic.
The green agenda is being exposed.
— PeterSweden (@PeterSweden7) February 2, 2024
The farmers are not going to be bought off with token gestures, as the government in Portugal tried to do before its farmers staged their demonstrations.
The government on Wednesday announced emergency aid worth 500 million euros for farmers to try to avoid the kind of mass protests causing disruption in France and Brussels, but a small group of farmers, feeling under-represented in public discussion on the issue, contacted each other on social media and decided to take action.
Starting at dawn hundreds of farmers with tractors and other vehicles made their way slowly to the four main crossing points to neighbouring Spain.
Road police GNR said that two Portuguese highways had been cut in both directions close to the borders with Spain, in Vilar Formoso in the north and Caia in the south, as well as a smaller national motorway in the region of Alentejo.
I sincerely doubt our press will give this news the attention it deserves. I look forward to its surprise when the other countries in Europe decide Netherlands had the right idea . . . unexpectedly.
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EU socialists going to ban all agriculture (except for cannabis which they will designate as “‘medicine”). Then they can be held hostage by the countries they rely on for food imports. While they are too stoned to get off the sofa when putin rolls in the tanks.
Pot makes the masses inert. The stoners will never challenge them competently, or at all.
The media is in on it
Somehow we have to overcome that.
Somehow, someway, soon..
From CTH
When I’ve had guests from Down Under, one of their greatest joys was visiting a “beverage center”. Not just all kinds of cheap beer, but you might even get a tee shirt with it.
Australia’s quite rightly bitter at sobering news of another 4% tax on beer. We’re being tapped for 30% more tax on beer than our fellow drinkers in the UK. Australia’s the 4th most expensive place on Earth for a beer. We love our lager & this is nothing but a crafty tax on fun.
https://twitter.com/MRobertsQLD/status/1752951920526774360?s=20
This makes me hopping mad.
European Parliament members are too busy raping third world chambermaids in their hotel suites to give this their full attention.
All this carbon fear is just that. The evil elites want to rework the world based on bought and paid for “settled science”. Congressman Massey confronted John Kerry with the fact that CO2 levels in the atmosphere were 1,000ppm years ago and now are down to 420 ppm and we are fine. Perhaps we should be adding CO
2 to enhance plant growth. Kerry has a degree in science…political science and when that was mentioned he whined his way out of answering Massey’s science based questions. On You Tube.
Once again, if anyone is in favor of NetZero policies they should Simply Be denied the right to buy anything that comes from a farm and that includes food.
This is looking less like 2024 and more like 1789. Good.
I think you mean mid 1770’s. Nothing exciting was going on in 1789, other than a bunch of guys meeting secretly in Philadelphia to find a way to organize the states to stand behind the debt to the King of England, and maybe fix some other problems that have never been clearly identified to me.
Those ignored, dominated, frustrated, and outraged French deplorables stormed the Bastille in 1789. (Yeah, looked up to be sure.)
Seems like a just-right parallel to me.
I hope they’re not thrown in a dungeon and sentenced to decades in prison for their constructive protest. In some ways we’re now one of the worst countries in the world, maybe better than China but that’s about it.
Maybe not better than China. The Tiananmen Square occupiers were mostly not punished at all. A relative very few were shot when the square was finally cleared, but punishments were minimal.
My wife just spent almost 2 weeks traveling around Germany and England. She didn’t see one protest.
From this evergreen essay:
“For the Virtual elite, the most unforgiveable thing about the Physicals, and the physical world in general, is that they stubbornly refuse to yield to full, frictionless control. There is a reason the dominant informational class is today most comfortable in a purely virtual environment – it’s one where they can have direct, instantaneous control over (virtual) matter. Real matter is stubbornly resistant, a reminder that the self doesn’t control the universe. It’s dirty, polluting, a reminder of one’s vulnerability, even mortality. And the need to rely on other humans to deal with it is super awkward.”
So, no one else had difficulty grasping the headline initially, because all they could picture was the George of the Jungle opening? (“Ursula”)
food is NOT needed by our people
however,, the rest of us fly to davos and the usa etc so let the farmers protest
The tractors came to Brussels this time.
The Dutch farmers could have done it easily when they started protesting at home.