Brussels Burns, the Countryside Holds the Line

Brussels woke up on Thursday shrouded in smoke, sirens, and the roar of tractors. The European Quarter—the administrative heart of the Union—was transformed for hours into a veritable battlefield. Smoke grenades, police charges, and blocked access points defined a day in which Europe’s countryside decided to make itself heard by force, exhausted by ignored warnings and endlessly postponed promises.

What filled the air was not just another sectoral protest, but accumulated frustration with a bureaucratic class that talks endlessly and delivers little. The violence—growing, undeniable, and deeply uncomfortable—did not come out of nowhere. It is the visible symptom of a political fracture Brussels has spent years refusing to confront.

The protest did not take place in a vacuum. It coincided—by no means accidentally—with yet another last-minute postponement of the EU–Mercosur agreement, a trade deal that has been in negotiation for 25 years and once again failed to reach a conclusion. Italy, under heavy pressure from its farming sector, forced the delay and left the agreement in political limbo, reinforcing an inconvenient truth: Mercosur has never enjoyed broad or genuine support across Europe’s nations. From the outset, it has been a top-down project, driven by offices, committees, and summits rather than by national parliaments or solid social consensus.

Brussels continues to speak of “secure supply chains,” “strategic resilience,” and “autonomy.” But step outside the institutions and listen to those who work the land, and a very different conclusion emerges: the one thing that appears to matter least in practice is securing what no sovereignty can exist without—food.

As the European Union accelerates its rhetoric on rearmament, industrial planning, and conflict scenarios, it seems to forget a basic lesson of history: in any crisis—and especially in war—people need to eat. There can be no credible European defence if the countryside is suffocated, if domestic production is replaced by imports subject to different standards, or if farmers are treated as an ideological inconvenience rather than as a strategic asset. The social dimension matters too: if internal stability is the goal, making food a luxury is a dangerous place to start.

The Mercosur agreement encapsulates this contradiction almost perfectly. It is sold as a major geopolitical and commercial triumph, yet large segments of society see it as a direct threat to Europe’s agricultural model. Not only for economic reasons, but for cultural and social ones as well. Farming is not a line in an Excel spreadsheet; it is territory, community, and continuity. Many European countries—Spain in particular—once enjoyed a high degree of food security, meeting basic needs with relative ease. Someone decided that this, too, had to change.

Supporters of the deal argue that repeated delays damage the European Union’s international credibility. Perhaps. But the more fundamental question is this: what credibility does a Union retain when it cannot align its trade policy with the survival of its own producers? What legitimacy does a European project have when it advances only by bypassing, diluting, or neutralising national resistance?

The scenes in Brussels, with smoke grenades exploding outside buildings that endlessly preach dialogue, sustainability, and participation, captured the political moment with brutal clarity. This conflict is no longer merely technical or commercial. It is political. And it is social. Each delay to Mercosur is not an anomaly, but further confirmation that the consensus never existed.

Brussels may continue to buy time, hoping fatigue or fragmentation will defuse the protests. But what unfolded in the streets suggests the opposite: the countryside has realised that without pressure, it disappears from the equation. And when those who produce food feel they have nothing left to lose, political stability can no longer be taken for granted. Brussels may finally have found its kryptonite—and it is telling that it comes from the fields.

The great irony is that, in the name of the future, the European Union is neglecting the most basic necessity of all. Energy security, common defence, strategic autonomy—these concepts are repeated like mantras. But without food security, they are little more than empty rhetoric.

The protests in Brussels did not slow Mercosur by accident. They did so because they exposed, in the starkest possible way, the gap between real Europe and the Europe designed from above. And because they forced an uncomfortable truth back onto the agenda: you cannot govern indefinitely against those who sustain the country with their work.

The smoke will clear. The tractors will leave. But the problem will remain. And it will become increasingly difficult to ignore.