Farmers block roads in Brussels to protest South American free-trade deal

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BRUSSELS (AP) — Farmers in tractors blocked roads and set off fireworks in Brussels on Thursday outside a European Union leaders’ summit, prompting police to respond with tear gas and water cannons as protesters rallied against a major free-trade deal with South American nations.

Farmers fear an agreement with the trade bloc known as Mercosur will undercut their livelihoods, and there are broader political concerns it is driving support for the far right.

The farmers brought potatoes and eggs to throw — along with sausages and beer for nourishment — and waged a furious back-and-forth with police.

“We are fighting to defend our jobs across all European countries against Mercosur,” said Armand Chevron, a 23-year old French farmer.

Police in riot gear staffed barriers just outside the European Parliament, which evacuated some staff due to damage caused by protesters.

In Brussels, protesters burned tires and a faux wooden coffin bearing the word “Agriculture.” Their fire unleashed a black cloud that swirled with white tear gas.

“We will not die in silence,” read one sign. “The dictatorship starts here,” read another.

Hundreds of farmers like Pierre Vromann, 60, had arrived on tractors, which they parked to block roads around the key institutions of the EU.

The Mercosur deal would be “bad for farmers, bad for consumers, bad for citizens and bad for Europe,” said Vromann, who raises cattle and cereals in the nearby Belgian city of Waterloo.

Other farmers came from as far away as Spain and Poland.

The clashes between the farmers and police raged just a stone's throw from the Europa building, where leaders of the 27 EU nations discussed the trade pact as well as a proposal to seize Russian assets for use in Ukraine.

On Wednesday, Italy signaled it had reservations, joining the French-led opposition to signing the massive transatlantic free-trade deal between the EU and the five active Mercosur countries — Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia. The deal would progressively remove duties on almost all goods traded between the two blocs over the next 15 years.

French President Emmanuel Macron dug in against the Mercosur deal as he arrived for Thursday’s EU summit, pushing for further concessions and more discussions in January. He said he has been in discussions with Italian, Polish, Belgian, Austrian and Irish colleagues among others about delaying it.

“Farmers already face an enormous amount of challenges,″ he said, as farmer protests roil regions around France. “We cannot sacrifice them on this accord.”

Worried by a surging far right that rallies support by criticizing the deal, Macron's government has demanded safeguards to monitor and stop large economic disruption in the EU, increased regulations in the Mercosur nations like pesticide restrictions, and more inspections of imports at EU ports.

Premier Giorgia Meloni told the Italian Parliament on Wednesday that signing the agreement in the coming days “would be premature.”

“This doesn’t mean that Italy intends to block or oppose (the deal), but that it intends to approve the agreement only when it includes adequate reciprocal guarantees for our agricultural sector,” Meloni said.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is determined to sign the agreement, but she needs the backing of at least two-thirds of EU nations.

Italy’s opposition would give France enough votes to veto von der Leyen’s signature.

In Greece, farmers have set up roadblocks along highways across the country for weeks, protesting delays in agricultural subsidy payments as well as high production costs and low product prices that they say are strangling their sector and making it impossible to make ends meet.

The accord has been under negotiation for 25 years. Once ratified, it would cover a market of 780 million people and a quarter of the globe’s gross domestic product. Supporters say it would offer a clear alternative to Beijing's export-controls and Washington's tariff blitzkrieg, while detractors say it will undermine both environmental regulations and the EU's iconic agricultural sector.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said ahead of the Brussels summit that the EU's global status would be dented by a delay or scrapping of the deal.

“If the European Union wants to remain credible in global trade policy, then decisions must be made now,” Merz said.

The deal is also about strategic competition between Western nations and China over Latin America, said Agathe Demarais, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “A failure to sign the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement risks pushing Latin American economies closer to Beijing’s orbit,” she said.

Von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa are scheduled to sign the deal in Brazil on Saturday.

The political tensions that have marked Mercosur in recent years — especially between Argentina’s far-right President Javier Milei and Brazil’s center-left Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the bloc’s two main partners — have not deterred South American leaders from pursuing an alliance with Europe that will benefit their agricultural sectors.

Lula has been one of the most fervent promoters of the agreement. As host of the upcoming summit, the Brazilian president is betting on closing the deal Saturday and scoring a major diplomatic achievement ahead of next year’s general elections, in which he will seek reelection. He said he was surprised by Italy’s hesitancy, and had spoken about it directly with Meloni.

At a cabinet meeting Wednesday, Lula was clearly irked by Italy and France's positions. He said that Saturday would be a make-or-break moment for the deal.

“If we don't do it now, Brazil won't make any more agreements while I'm president,” Lula said, adding that the agreement would “defend multilateralism” as Trump pursues unilateralism.

Milei, a close ideological ally of Trump, also supports the deal.

“We must stop thinking of Mercosur as a shield that protects us from the world and start thinking of it as a spear that allows us to effectively penetrate global markets,” he said some time ago.

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Associated Press writers Debora Rey in Buenos Aires, Claudia Ciobanu in Warsaw, Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin, Elene Becatoros in Athens, Gabriela Sá Pessoa in Sao Paolo, and Sylvain Plazy and Angela Charlton in Brussels contributed to this report.