To the distant echo of thousands of chanting protesters, EU farm ministers last night took off the gloves to do battle over the future shape of European agriculture.
In the streets, some 30,000 farmers, according to police estimates (50,000, according to farm organisations), converged from as far away as Finland and Portugal to demand full compensation for the swingeing price cuts proposed by the European Commission.
At what is expected to be a marathon session of the Farm Council on Agenda 2000, the German presidency last night tabled the first of a long series of compromise papers aimed at breaking the deadlock on the two sectors which are vital to Ireland, beef and milk. The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, described the paper as "disappointing", but said that he was prepared to stay as long as it took to secure an equitable settlement for Ireland. He was willing to "come back next month" if it came to that.
The president of the Irish Farmers' Association, Mr Tom Parlon, launched a bitter attack earlier on the rationale of the Commission's approach to farm reform.
"This is not, at the end of the day, about fighting for the last buck, but the survival of the family farm", Mr Parlon said.
He warned that the Commission's insistence on reducing beef prices to "artificially low world market levels" would condemn Europe to US-style industrial farming.
Five thousand police kept the protesters - a majority of them French - away from the EU's council building and used water cannon and tear gas against a small numbers of young demonstrators.
The latter threw firecrackers, bottles, potatoes and broken paving stones at heavily-defended police lines and ripped up trees and benches as they moved through the European quarter's residential streets.
Police said that a dozen people were arrested and the same number of police officers had been slightly injured.
Ministers began responding to the presidency package in a series of bilateral meetings last night. Plenary talks are expected to resume at midday today. A compromise proposal on cereals is also expected today.
While the initial paper presented by the German presidency did not touch on the controversial issue of funding, Mr Walsh said that it did provide some improvements on intervention and on provision for more extensive farming.
There were also some possibilities in proposals to reallocate milk quota increases, he said.
An IFA contingent of 106 farmers joined the earlier march and Mr Parlon, in an address to the demonstration, said that the talks would "test the real mettle of the Government".
He said he had personally told the Minister that "no deal was better than a bad deal".
Speaking to journalists later, Mr Parlon said that the notion that Europe's beef industry could survive at world market prices was "profoundly mistaken".
He cited the "give-away" contract signed last year by Irish producers to export 130,000 tonnes of beef to Egypt at 25p a lb - half the current Irish price and a third of the Italian price.
That strategy, and the consequent wild oscillation in prices and incomes which it would generate, was a recipe for the depopulation of rural areas, Mr Parlon claimed.
The experience of the pig sector proved the point, Mr Parlon argued, with about a quarter of producers being driven out of business as production became increasingly concentrated among large producers.
Farm ministers will meet all week ahead of a mini-summit of EU leaders in Bonn on Friday, at which sparks are expected to fly over both agricultural and structural fund cutbacks.
The aim is to conclude a deal on the Agenda 2000 proposals for the 2000-2006 EU budget in Berlin by the end of March.
