Farmers blocked highways across France on Monday and said they aimed to “besiege” Paris, in a bid to press the government to do more to help them weather inflation, compete with cheap imports and make a living.
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’ organisations said that was not enough.
“At this stage, what we want … is to increase the pressure,” Arnaud Rousseau, head of the powerful farmers’ union FNSEA, 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.”
France’s protests follow similar action in other European countries, including Germany and Poland, ahead of European elections in which the far right, for whom farmers represent a growing constituency, is seen making gains.
Near Beauvais, north of Paris, dozens of tractors lined the highway in one of many such protests across the country, displaying banners that read: “I love my job but I would like to make a living from it” and “Our end will be your hunger” – a play on the similar sounding French words fin (end) and faim (hunger).
EU TALKS
The farmers’ concerns, said Regis Desrumaux, head of the FDSEA union in the Oise region, are broad, including cheap imports, fallow land and red tape.
In Longvilliers, southwest of Paris, Reuters footage showed tractors blocking the A10 highway both towards and from the capital, with traffic diverted to smaller roads.
President Emmanuel Macron will make a push for more pro-farming policies at a summit of EU leaders on Thursday, Farming Minister Marc Fesneau said.
Farmers must meet certain conditions to receive EU subsidies – including a requirement to devote 4% of farmland to “non-productive” areas where nature can recover. That can be done by leaving land lying fallow.
Two EU officials told Reuters the EU’s executive Commission was looking into changing the fallow land rule, as requested by France, among other options to respond to the farmers’ concerns.
The Commission had already temporarily exempted farmers from the rule in response to the Ukraine war and food security concerns.
In Brussels too, traffic on the ring road around the Belgian capital was disrupted by angry farmers and about a dozen tractors had made it through to Square de Meeus in Brussels’ EU area where they honked loudly.
Angry farmers stopped about five trucks with Spanish vegetables and dumped the produce near the distribution centre of Belgian retailer Colruyt near Brussels, Belgian media reported.
(Reuters)
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