Yes, on Thursday, the farmers were back in Brussels! And (spoiler alert!) they aren’t happy.
And yet, despite the noise and manure, is there anything more pro-European than a bunch of farmers from across the continent gathering in Brussels and setting things on fire just meters from where prime ministers and presidents are discussing how to get money to Ukraine? Perhaps only if they all headed straight to Provence for two months.
Incidentally, French, Irish and Greek colleagues said the farmers being in Brussels reminded them of being back home because of the protests, the tractors and the tear gas, respectively. Now that’s European unity!
For those outside the Belgian capital, the best way to describe farmers’ occasional trips to Brussels is like when the fans of an English football team arrive in your city and smash the place up, but with more rubber boots and less sunburned flesh.
The farmers arrive by tractor — so presumably had to set off in 1998 — and set up camp near the headquarters of the EU institutions, blocked from getting too close by the Belgian police (who will arrest the average citizen without a second’s thought if they put out the wrong bin bag on the wrong day — probably — but will let a farmer set fire to an oil barrel and not even bat an eyelid).
To alleviate the boredom, they play tunes on their tractor horns. Many are hard to identify, but the following were heard from POLITICO Towers on Thursday morning: “Baby Shark,” “Barbie Girl,” “Crazy Frog,” the first half of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” theme song, and even some Mozart. Perhaps the (mostly) horrible musical choices are the farmers’ version of Guantánamo Bay, where American troops tried to break prisoners by blasting them with loud music.