{"id":641440,"date":"2025-12-19T03:09:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T03:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/641440\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T03:09:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T03:09:13","slug":"forget-the-eu-summit-the-best-and-worst-of-europe-can-be-found-at-the-farmers-protests-in-brussels-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/641440\/","title":{"rendered":"Forget the EU summit, the best (and worst) of Europe can be found at the farmers\u2019 protests in Brussels \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes, on Thursday, the farmers were back in Brussels!<\/a> And (spoiler alert!) they aren\u2019t happy.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s European unity!<\/p>\n

For those outside the Belgian capital, the best way to describe farmers\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

The farmers arrive by tractor \u2014 so presumably had to set off in 1998 \u2014\u00a0and 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\u2019s thought if they put out the wrong bin bag on the wrong day \u2014\u00a0probably \u2014\u00a0but will let a farmer set fire to an oil barrel and not even bat an eyelid).<\/p>\n

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: \u201cBaby Shark,\u201d \u201cBarbie Girl,\u201d \u201cCrazy Frog,\u201d the first half of the \u201cPirates of the Caribbean\u201d theme song, and even some Mozart. Perhaps the (mostly) horrible musical choices are the farmers\u2019 version of Guant\u00e1namo Bay, where American troops tried to break prisoners by blasting them with loud music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yes, on Thursday, the farmers were back in Brussels! And (spoiler alert!) they aren\u2019t happy. And yet, despite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[19132,2000,299,5187],"class_list":{"0":"post-641440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-declassified","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-european"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115744038126220093","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}