French farmer protests continue as crisis reaches Brussels

PARIS/BRUSSELS — France's farmers showed little sign on Thursday of abandoning their protests despite government concessions in response to a movement that has spread nationwide and elsewhere in Europe.

Italian and Spanish farmers said they were joining the protest movement that has also hit Germany and Belgium, aiming to press governments to ease environmental rules and shield them from rising costs and cheap imports.

Seven blockades were in place on motorways around Paris, throttling access to the capital as farmers in tractors were running a go-slow on the A9 motorway linking to Spain.

Long-standing complaints about squeezed pay, heavy regulation and tax were first inflamed by an agricultural fuel duty rise, whose reversal by the government last week has failed to calm tempers.

"We're still in action because the measures that have been announced are not up to our expectations or the stakes," said Bruno Vila, a union chief in the southwestern Pyrenees-Orientales department.

While French President Emmanuel Macron is in Brussels for an EU summit, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal's office said he would hold a news conference after days of talks with rural unions.

A group of 79 farmers were released after being held in custody for a Wednesday incursion into the Rungis wholesale food market near Paris, a vital distribution hub for the capital region's 12 million people.

Meanwhile on Thursday, farmers threw eggs and stones at the European Parliament in Brussels, starting fires near the building and setting off fireworks in protests to press a summit of European Union leaders to do more to help them with taxes and rising costs.

Protesters tried to tear down the barriers erected in front of parliament — a few blocks from where the summit was taking place — but police pushed them back with water hoses. Police also fired tear gas.

A local official said a statue on the square where farmers had gathered near the parliament with their tractors was damaged.

Major thoroughfares in Brussels, the heart of the European Union, were blocked by around 1,300 tractors, according to a police estimate.

Security personnel in riot gear stood guard behind barriers where the leaders were meeting at European Council headquarters.

Farmers say they are not being paid enough, are choked by taxes and green rules and face unfair competition from abroad.

The protests across Europe come ahead of European Parliament elections in June in which the far right, for whom farmers represent a growing constituency, is seen making gains.

In Italy, farmers with hundreds of tractors have blocked traffic near motorway access points outside Milan, in Tuscany and elsewhere in recent days.

"Farming is dying", read one placard held aloft in a demonstration by Italian farmers who held new nationwide protests on Wednesday.

The protests included more than 300 vehicles gathered in Alessandria, near Milan, with a similar number of farmers and shepherds in the Sardinian port of Cagliari, according to the AGI news agency.

Agencies - Xinhua