Belgian farmers have joined mass protests by their French colleagues. Speaking out against the decline of the country’s agriculture, farmers on Sunday evening blocked four major motorways in the kingdom with tractors, the Federation of Young Farmers of Belgium (FjA) said.
More than 100 tractors are involved in the protests in different parts of the country, according to TV channel VRT. Traffic is stopped on the E19 motorway linking Brussels and Paris at Waterloo city level, at the junction of the E411 (Brussels-Luxembourg) and E42 (Mons-Liège) motorways near Namur, and partially blocked on the E25 (Liège-Luxembourg) motorway, according to data from Belgian traffic monitoring centre Turing.
In a statement, the FjA announced that the road blockage will continue until the morning of 29 January. The federation called on Belgians to support the agrarians’ protest.
“Citizens must realise that we are also acting in their interests. A society in which farmers are at risk can be a danger to everyone and anyone. We have already seen this with energy, dependence on other parts of the world can have many consequences, including financially. We need to fight together to prevent this from happening to agriculture,” the association said in a statement.
According to the Derniere Heure newspaper, police are present in the area where the protests are taking place, but no action is being taken against the farmers and the actions are taking place peacefully. On Sunday evening, the blocking of even the country’s key motorways is causing inconvenience only to a small number of drivers. The question is whether the protests will be over by the start of the Monday morning rush hour, when the blocking of major motorways could cause economic damage to many sectors of the economy.
As a rule, major protests in France almost always spread to Belgium over time, as the whole of Wallonia – the southern part of Belgium – lives in a French-speaking media space, and many of the problems faced by the French are to some extent inherent in neighbouring Belgium.
Mass demonstrations of agrarians are taking place in France due to farmers’ dissatisfaction with falling incomes due to inflation and increased imports of agricultural products from Ukraine. Agrarians are also in favour of simplifying EU-driven bureaucratic procedures and easing agricultural regulations. In protest, farmers on tractors block motorways and hold demonstrations in front of government buildings.
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