BRUSSELS: Thousands of farmers snarled traffic and pelted the police with eggs on Monday in a protest to demand emergency aid to offset falling prices for milk, pork and other agricultural products.
The daylong protests created chaos on the roads as convoys of tractors trundled along Brussels’s main arteries and past buildings where European Union agriculture ministers were holding a special session to consider an aid package worth 500 million euros, or about $560 million.
Dutch police in full-body riot gear reinforced their Belgian counterparts, who closed off entrances to the conference site with barbed-wire barricades. Farmers responded by sounding their tractor horns and building a vast bonfire that billowed acrid black smoke.
One reason for the protests is a disruption in Europe’s produce markets, which are oversupplied with milk in particular. Many dairy farmers blamed a decision by the European Union earlier this year to end a quota system that had helped buoy prices.
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But geopolitical and macroeconomic factors have also had an impact.
