Tractors on the streets in Brussels against cuts in agricultural policy and Mercosur agreement

Brussels – Around one thousand tractors and eight thousand people. These are the numbers, announced by the Brussels Capital Police, with which farmers kept their promise to return to protest in Brussels today (18 December) in conjunction with the European Council. From Belgium, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and other countries, the producers brought three demands: a “strong, common and well-funded Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after 2027,” “fair and transparent trade,” and “real simplification and legal certainty.” In fact, the European Commission’s proposal for the next EU multiannual budget (MFF) 2028–2034—which merges separate programmes such as the CAP and Cohesion into one fund and reduces the resources allocated to the agricultural sector—and the trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur are in the dock as a matter of priority. 

“Today agribusiness is the number one item for European exports,” but “attempts are being made to weaken it with an agreement, the Mercosur, that wants to favour other production chains and other sectors and once again sell off agriculture and agribusiness,” said Ettore Prandini, national president of Coldiretti. “In all of this, we demand a simple principle, that of reciprocity: the same rules imposed on Italian and European agricultural companies must apply when we import products from other continents. Otherwise, it is a form of unfair competition that is unacceptable to us,” he explained. But in addition to the agreement with the South American countries—Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay—the protest is also fuelled by “a cut of 90 billion in economic resources in the next financial planning” of the European Union. “This is minus 9 billion for Italy. This is unacceptable at a time when all countries in the world are investing precisely in producing more food, in making more innovation,” he commented. “We cannot lose this heritage that is worth 707 billion for Italy as a whole, 4 million people employed, and a historical export record in 2025 of 73 billion,” he sounded the alarm.

Vincenzo Gesmundo, Secretary General of Coldiretti, asks: “Can we be happy with a Europe that takes 90 billion from farmers and gives it to Germany to build new tanks and finance industrial reconversion? No to the policy that von der Leyen brings to the CAP. But an equally clear no to the agreements that von der Leyen wants at all costs, first against the health of European citizens and then against the interests of the farmers themselves. This is not the Europe we want.” Among the demonstrators were also European and Italian tobacco producers “to denounce an approach that we consider penalising,” explained Gennarino Masiello, vice national president of Coldiretti and president of Unitab Europa. “Not only in the area of agricultural policies, where tobacco continues to suffer discrimination within the CAP, but also in the area of fiscal policies, with a revision of the Directive on the structure and rates of excise duty applied to tobacco and related products that excessively penalises the raw tobacco sector,” he stressed. 

The multiannual budget and Mercosur were also on the agenda of the European Council meeting. But if on the budget the discussion among the Twenty-Seven leaders was introductory and the heads of state or government converged on the importance of working towards “an agreement by the end of 2026”, on the next multi-annual budget, on the trade agreement, the EU capitals are divided. Even after the agreement reached between the European Parliament and the EU Council on the safeguard clauses for the agricultural sector. Case in point: while for the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, “there can only be one decision: that Europe gives its consent,” French President Emmanuel Macron thinks that the agreement “cannot be signed.” A position, this one from Paris, that would seem to prevail given that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva explained, at a press conference in Brasilia, that he had spoken with the Italian premier, Giorgia Meloni. “My surprise was to learn that Italy, along with France, did not want to sign the agreement. I spoke with Meloni, and she explained that she is not opposed to the agreement, that she is experiencing political embarrassment over the Italian farmers, but that she is sure she can convince them to accept it. Then she told me that if we were patient for a week, 10 days, a month at most, Italy would join,” Lula said. This was confirmed in Rome. “With regard to the agreement on Mercosur, as already stated in Parliament by President Meloni and also reiterated to President Lula of Brazil, the Italian government is ready to sign the agreement as soon as the necessary answers are provided to the farmers, which depend on the decisions of the European Commission and can be defined in a short time,” Palazzo Chigi explained in a note.

 Meanwhile, throughout the day of protests, the city of Brussels experienced several disruptions. In Place du Luxembourg, in front of the European Parliament, clashes broke out. The protesters threw potatoes, beets, eggs, stones, bottles, firecrackers, set fires, burning tyres and some trees in the square, and damaged the windows of one of the buildings facing the square, Station Europe. The police intervened by using water cannons and then throwing smoke bombs. While the STIB, the Intercommunal Transport Company of Brussels, announced the suspension of bus and tram services in the European quarter, in the city centre, and in more peripheral areas such as the Woluwe-Saint-Pierre quarter.