EU farmers' protest turns violent in Luxembourg

Mon Jun 22, 2:31 pm ET

LUXEMBOURG (AFP) – European farmers protesting the fall of milk prices clashed with police outside the venue of an EU farm ministers meeting in Luxembourg Monday.

Protesters hurled eggs, cans and bottles at police and security guards and blocked the route to the meeting with some of the 300 tractors they had brought to the demonstration.

Some set rubbish bins and tyres ablaze during the demonstration.

Others rushed into a nearby supermarket and emerged with pallets of milk bottles, which they handed out to passers-by or used as missiles against the police.

The protest organisers, from the Copa-Cogeca European farming federation and the European Milk Board, put the turnout at 5,000 and said participants had travelled from Belgium, France and Germany to join the protest.

Police said the figure was "a little more than 3,000 protesters".

The demonstrators brandished banners and placards bearing slogans such as "Europe is leaving us to perish," and "If farming dies nothing can survive."

The protesters gathered near the venue of the EU farm ministers' meeting and about 300 of them tried to force their way into the building before being led away by riot police.

The farmers' action follows milk protests in several European cities, including a noisy gathering in the European quarter of Brussels.

According to a local police spokesman, two of the protesters were slightly injured in the scuffles, including one who was on the receiving end of a disabling spray used by police.

The situation had calmed down by early evening, but traffic in Luxembourg remained hit by farmers staging a go-slow drive.

EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel denounced the violence by "a small group of trouble-makers". She had no magic wand to address their grievances, she said.

She implicitly criticised countries such as France and Germany for continuing to question the decision to lift quotas.

"It's dangerous and irresponsible to foster unrealistic hopes on what we can do," she said.

But French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier urged his EU colleagues to listen to the protesters' demands.

Europe "should not leave the food industry in general, and the milk sector in particular, just to the law of market forces, which is the least social, ecological and economic law," he said. France has Europe's biggest farm sector.

The farmers say a decision to scrap milk quotas is threatening their livelihood.

Last November, the 27 EU agriculture ministers agreed to lift milk production quotas by one percent per year before scrapping them altogether in 2014-2015.

Quotas were introduced in 1984 to support prices and tackle the then notorious butter mountains and milk lakes in Europe created by overproduction.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, facing a particularly intense protest at home, has agreed to tax breaks to help farms struggling due to falling food prices.

Merkel can ill afford to lose farmers' support before elections in September.

The farmers accused the commissioner of seeking to wipe out small producers in favour of factory farms.