BRUSSELS—Fishermen demonstrating against the soaring price of fuel clashed with police near the European Union's headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday after a peaceful morning stand-off turned violent.
Hundreds of fishermen, mostly from France and Italy, occupied the district's main avenue and a smaller group set off flares against police, who charged them.
A car was overturned, windows smashed, notably at the European Commission's agriculture department, and a litter bin was set on fire. Some fishermen hurled bricks that they had pulled from the pavement. At least 10 protesters were arrested. Police in riot gear and gas masks had lined up behind a barbed wire barricade preventing the protesters and the public from reaching the European Commission's main building. Nearby metro stations were closed.
By late afternoon calm had been restored.
French fishermen say they will go broke unless they obtain discounted diesel at 40 euro cents ($0.62) per litre as opposed to 80 euro cents on the market. The price of marine diesel has surged by 30 percent in the past four months. They also want the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, to intervene by raising the amount of financial aid that a government may grant to its fisheries sector without attracting the scrutiny of EU internal market regulators.
"We are here because every time we ask our own government ... they tell us it's Brussels' fault. And so we have come to Brussels," French fisherman Alain Rico told Reuters Television.
A handful of demonstrators met the chief political adviser to EU Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg, who was not himself in Brussels, and explained their grievances.
"The Commission is acutely aware that this is a crisis for the sector that is real, immediate and requires action," the adviser, Patrick Tabone, said at the entrance to the Commission's headquarters.
"The big problem is that the cause of it, which is high oil prices, is something that we are all having to live with ... we are all trying to understand it, to adjust to it and to find the proper European response, not just in fisheries."
A Topic At EU Summit
EU leaders will discuss the impact of high oil prices on Europe's fisheries sector at a summit in mid-June, he said. The sector also suffered from overcapacity and badly needed to restructure, he said, to the jeers of the fishermen.
"It's a problem that is shared by all European fishermen so we came here united to ask Brussels to help us," said Italian fisherman Umberto Cogisnani.
The EU has strict rules about aid by its member states to particular industries and companies that are designed to ensure governments grant assistance that does not give one sector in a particular country an unfair trade advantage.
In France, truckers, taxi drivers and farmers staged go-slows on major highways to pressure the government over fuel costs, emulating a protest on Tuesday which paralysed traffic around Paris's main business district.
Several dozen slow-moving lorries snarled traffic leading to Paris's Roissy airport, causing 7 km (4.4 miles) of tailbacks.
A similar protest by more than a hundred truckers brought chaos to the ring road around the southern city of Toulouse.
A number of ports, including Dieppe on the Channel coast, remained blocked by a hardcore of fishermen seeking more government aid.
The French government is due to hold talks with the various parties on June 10 and in the run up to that meeting, ministers are seeing agriculture, haulage and fishing representatives individually.
Feeds