E.E.C. FARM PRICES Brussels riot lasts for six hours

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32564, 25 March 1971, Page 11

E.E.C. FARM PRICES Brussels riot lasts for six hours

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) BRUSSELS, March 24. A six-hour riot by angry European farmers left the Belgian capital’s boulevards like a battlefield today; and the issue of price rises for farm produce was still not settled in Common Market ministerial talks. Lorries and bulldozers were out early today to clear the wreckage of the rioting that swept through Brussels with hurricane force as farm ministers of the six-nation Common Market prepared for a fresh attempt to agree on increases for the coming season.

This was the explosive issue which sent 80,000 farmers from the E.E.C. countries rampaging through Brussels yesterday, and clashing with police. One demonstrator was killed when a teargas grenade exploded in his face.

Another Belgian fanner was shot in the shoulder as a police inspector fired his pistol to save himself from being trampled to death by an angry mob. Police firmly denied reports that the inspector was killed. 68 arrested According to the latest police count, 128 civilians and 31 policemen were injured. Sixty-eight persons were arrested. The clashes left a trail of destruction along the city’s boulevards, trees being uprooted, shops ransacked and paving stones tom up. The farmers, calling for the first price rises for their produce in four years, gutted two trams and three cars. Six more cars and a hay lorry were set ablaze, and two trucks laden with beer and cheese were pillaged. They tried to light fires in a central Brussels store and post office, but these were soon put out, as were scores of bonfires made from placards and packing cases.

Chicken clubs At one stage, firemen arriving on the scene were beaten back by farmers wielding dead chickens like clubs. Far.

lier demonstrators tried, but failed, to set two fire engines ablaze. Commenting on the rioting the French Agriculture Minister (Mr Michel Cointat) said after the day’s fruitless session that he was upset that there were dead and wounded. But, he declared, “You cannot influence basic problems through demagogy.” Mr Cointat, who is presiding at the meeting, added that he and his colleagues were determined to reach agreement today, the third day of their current marathon. The Ministers, whose dispute was essentially one between West Germany and Italy, were meeting on the top floor of a 15-storey building guarded by scores of police with rifles and water cannon. Italy’s position At the root of the ministerial wrangle is the fact that Italy produces comparatively little food, while her fanners are among the most impoverished in fte Community. She is therefore insisting on a long-term commitment to Community-financed modernisation measures to ease the plight of her farm population as a condition for accepting price increases. West Germany, which stands to pay a lot of money in any E.E.C.-wide structural reform schemes, is campaigning for higher prices for her farmers, hit by the 1969 revaluation of the mark, with a low commitment to structural improvement.

All countries except Italy have virtually agreed on moderate price increases coupled with £llB million being ear-

marked for modernisation between 1972 and 1974. But Italy resisted this time and cash ceiling, demanding that the sum should rise over the next six years to £lo4om, as proposed by the European Commission.