Convoys of tractors edged closer to Paris, Lyon and other strategic locations in France on Wednesday as thousands of protesting farmers appeared to ignore warnings of police intervention if they cross red lines laid down by the government.
Farmers’ unions, unimpressed by concessions offered by President Emmanuel Macron‘s government, encouraged their members to fight on for improved pay, less red tape and protection from foreign competition.
“I’m so proud of you,” Serge Bousquet-Cassagne, head of the farmers’ association in the southwestern Lot-et-Garonne department, told protesters headed for the wholesale Rungis market south of Paris, a key food distribution platform for the capital.
“You are fighting this battle because if we don’t fight we die,” he said.
The government has warned farmers to stay away from Rungis and large cities, with Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin – who has ordered police so far to tread lightly – saying police stood ready to defend strategic spots.
“They can’t attack police, they can’t enter Rungis, they can’t enter the Paris airports or the centre of Paris,” Darmanin told the France 2 broadcaster. “But let me tell you again that if they try, we will be there.”
Despite the warning, a convoy of tractors that started in the French southwest resumed its drive towards Rungis early Wednesday after spending the night on farms along the way, AFP reporters said.
Police units with armoured vehicles have been deployed along the A6 motorway leading to the food market in anticipation of their arrival.
Darmanin said there were 10,000 protesting farmers on French roads Wednesday, blocking 100 spots along major roads.
In addition to moving on Paris, convoys were also attempting to encircle Lyon, France’s third-biggest city.
‘Strength and pride’
Farmers’ complaints range from rising costs to meeting carbon-cutting targets, fuel prices, inflation, bureaucracy, and Ukrainian grain imports.
Read moreFewer, older, poorer: France’s farming crisis in numbers
The French mobilisation has blown up into a serious crisis for Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who is only three weeks into the job after a cabinet shake-up.
Addressing parliament on Tuesday, Attal said his government stood ready to resolve the crisis and praised the agriculture sector as “our strength and our pride”.
Agriculture embodies the “values of work, freedom and entrepreneurship”, Attal said, adding: “It is one of the foundations of our identity and our traditions.”
In an apparent reference to contested EU rules, he said: “France must be granted an exception for its agriculture.”
But in an acknowledgement that a first battery of measures announced on Friday did not go far enough, Attal told lawmakers that “new support measures” would be announced in the coming days.
The prime minister met with officials from the FNSEA farmers’ union, the country’s largest, in Paris on Tuesday evening.
He was due to meet Wednesday with another union, the Farmers’ Confederation – which on Tuesday called for the blocking of distribution centres for grocery stores to protest over chains that sell agriculture products below cost, at farmers’ expense.
It said Attal had yet to offer “any long-term prospects” for farmers.
France to block Mercosur trade deal
France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Paris would prevent a trade deal between the European Union and South American bloc Mercosur, which has emerged as a key grievance for farmers worried about foreign competition.
“This Mercosur deal, as it stands, is not good for our farmers. It cannot be signed as is, it won’t be signed as is,” Le Maire told broadcasters CNews and Europe 1 on Wednesday.
Speaking during a visit to Sweden on Tuesday, Macron had already expressed France’s opposition to the planned trade deal, though he also said it was “too easy” to blame all the farmers’ woes on the EU.
Read more‘French agriculture can’t be bartered away’: Farmers unite against EU rules and globalised markets
“We did a lot in the last years to help,” he said.
Macron said authorities would “try to simplify the rules” to help farmers and vowed to show “flexibility” on certain regulations.
After more than a week of intensifying French protests, disgruntled farmers in other European countries joined the movement.
Dozens of Italian farmers staged a protest with tractors near Milan on Tuesday, the latest in a series of small demonstrations across the country.
Spanish farmer unions said they would join the movement with a number of protests, while Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis offered to speed up financial aid to farmers to stave off protests engulfing other countries.Â
Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and Romania have all seen protests in recent days.
Much anger is directed at environmental requirements included in the EU’s updated Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the bloc’s forthcoming “Green Deal”.
The Mercosur deal as well as Ukrainian grain imports into the EU are on the agenda of talks between Macron and EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday.
France is the biggest beneficiary of EU farming subsidies, receiving more than nine billion euros ($9.8 billion) per year.
Once the bloc’s biggest agricultural exporter, it is now third behind the Netherlands and Germany.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP)
This story originally appeared on France24
