BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Farmers have blocked several border crossings between Belgium and the Netherlands, Belgian and Dutch traffic centres said on Friday, as they protest against grievances including taxes, rising costs, cheap imports and bureaucracy.
The border crossing in the direction of Antwerp, Belgium’s second-biggest city and home to Europe’s second-biggest port, is one of the blocked crossings, according to a post on social media platform X.
Local media reported most protesters came from Belgium, and some of them are Dutch.
In western Belgium, farmers have been blocking trucks from entering or leaving the port of Zeebrugge, part of Port of Antwerp-Bruges, for several days, with Flemish broadcaster VRT reporting that almost 2,000 trucks are stuck.
Farmers elsewhere in Europe are similarly disgruntled, with unrest seen in Germany, Poland, Greece, Portugal and Romania.
The protests have exposed tensions over the impact on farming of the EU’s drive to tackle climate change, as well as of opening the door to cheap Ukrainian imports to help Kyiv’s war effort.
(Reporting by Charlotte Van Campenhout; Editing by Varun H K and Jamie Freed)
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