'A race to the bottom': How the CAP green ambitions unravelled

"Farmers have been heard," David Clarinval, Belgium's agriculture minister, said last month after EU countries gave their nod to a recent proposal by the European Commission to relax environmental conditions in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) — the EU's billion euro agricultural subsidy.

But despite the council's swift approval, outside on the streets of Brussels protesting farmers clashed with the police as they voiced the...