The EU quarters in Brussels yesterday came to a complete halt as hundreds of angry fishermen, mostly from France and Italy, hurled stones at the police and fired flares at EU buildings during a protest against rising fuel prices.
The police estimated the number of protesters at about 250 but demonstrators said law enforcement agents had prevented hundreds of others from Spain and Portugal from reaching the Belgian capital.
Flares fired by the fishermen damaged the headquarters of the European Commission and smashed windows of a nearby building hosting EU translators. Police officers in anti-riot gear moved in to disperse the crowd.
Many of the surrounding streets were cordoned off with barbed wire.
At least one policeman was slightly injured in the clashes, which took place while a delegation of about 30 fishermen was meeting Patrick Tabone, head of cabinet Maltese Commissioner Joe Borg, responsible for fisheries.
Dr Borg was not in Brussels at the time of the protest as he is in Latvia on an EU mission.
"The Commission is acutely aware that this is a crisis for the sector that is real, immediate and requires action," Mr 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," he said. Dr Borg said last week that increasing subsidies and cutting taxes is not the solution. European fisheries would only have a future if member states, industry and the EU Executive worked together to create "smaller, more fuel-efficient fleets".
Fishermen across Europe have staged demonstrations in protest at soaring fuel prices, which the Commission says has pushed the price of marine diesel up by 240 per cent since 2004.
The Commission, which is responsible for setting annual limits on the amount and type of fish EU fishermen can catch, regularly comes under fire from the fishing industry, which accuses Brussels of setting unfairly low quotas and overloading it with complex legislation.