Brussels blocked by tractors, farmers protest EU policies (VIDEO)

Farmers were protesting everything, from what they see as excessive bureaucracy to increased environmental measures, cheap imports and unfair trade practices. Let's make a living from our profession,” was written on the sign of a large tractor blocking a main road.

Although smaller than previous demonstrations, the impact on the Belgian capital was considerable during the hour of the morning peak, and authorities urged travelers to stay outside Brussels and work from home as hard as possible.

With protests under way from Finland to Greece, Poland and Ireland, farmers have already won a series of concessions from the EU and national authorities, from the release of farm controls to the weakening of pesticides and environmental regulations, reports the Associated Press.

At the beginning of this month, the European Commission, the EU executive arm, proposed weakening or cutting the rules in areas such as rotation of crops, protecting land cover and delivery methods. Small farmers, representing about two-thirds of the labour force and most active within the protest movement across the continent, will be excluded from some checks and penalties under new regulations.

Environmentalists and climate activists say the change in EU policies under pressure from protest farmers is unfortunate. They say short-term concessions will follow the bloc in a generation when climate change will hit the continent even harder.

Politically, the bloc has moved to the right over the past year. The farmers' plight has become a call for populists and conservatives who claim that EU climate and agricultural policies are a little more than bureaucratic confusion by elite politicians who have lost any sense of land and land.