PROTEST – French farmers have Monday started an ‘indefinite’ tractor siege of Paris, blocking off key routes after threatening to ‘starve’ the city – amid warnings the capital only has three days of food.
As it is
Tractors are clogging major roads bringing traffic to a grinding halt around the city with stacks of hay bales also used to block carriageways as part of a bitter on-running dispute over work conditions.
Meanwhile, the southern city of Toulouse has nearly been ‘cut off’ in the midst of similar protests in what will be a major test for France‘s youngest ever PM Gabriel Attal – just weeks after he was appointed by President Emmanuel Macron aged 34.
Why the ‘Quasi-military’ Siege?
In recent weeks there has been a slew of protests in France, a major agricultural producer, by farmers angry about incomes, red tape and environmental policies they say undermine their ability to compete with other countries.
Protesting farmers started the operation by blocking the A13 highway to the west of the capital, the A4 to the east and the A6 on which hundreds of tractors rolled towards Paris from the south.
Government is Not Folding Hands
The government in response has deployed some 15,000 police officers.
By mid-afternoon they appeared to have met their objective of establishing eight chokepoints on major roads into Paris, according to Sytadin, a traffic monitoring service.
People Need Answers
‘We need answers,’ said Karine Duc, a farmer in the southwestern Lot-et-Garonne department as she joined a convoy of tractors heading for Paris. ‘This is the final battle for farming. It’s a question of survival,’ she added.
A banner on a tractor in the convoy said: ‘We will not die in silence.’
The crippling protests are the first major test for the country’s youngest ever Prime Minister Gabriel Attal who was appointed by President Emmanuel Macron just weeks ago.
The agriculture workers are protesting for more protection against rising production costs and for an end to green net zero policies that they say are putting them out of business.
Efforts to De-escalate the Protests
The government, wary of seeing the protests escalate and with an eye on European Parliament elections in June, has already dropped plans to gradually reduce subsidies on agricultural diesel and promised to ease environmental regulations.
France also said it would push its European Union peers to agree to ease regulations on fallow farmland. But farmers’ organisation said it was not enough.
Official Statement From the Union
‘At this stage, what we want … is to increase the pressure,’ head of the union Arnaud Rousseau said on RTL radio.
‘So we will block all the main highways that go to and from Paris, up to 30 kilometres (18 miles) from Paris … Our objective is to put pressure on the government, so that we can quickly find a solution for a way out of the crisis.’
The agriculture union FNSEA said there were ‘no plans’ to block Rungis, the massive food market in the south of the capital which supplies many of the city’s supermarkets and restaurants.
Rousseau claimed the farmers were ‘not there to starve the French people’.
The government agency Ademe said if there was any disruption to the daily food deliveries of over 8,000 tons of goods from Rungis, Paris only had about three days’ food supplies.
French police has been stationed outside the market with armoured vehicles in case the protest’s direction changes, since not all farmers seem to agree with the union’s decision.
