Given the plans of the French peasants to start a “siege of Paris” this January 29, the Government proposed a “large defensive operation.” Law enforcement, including armored gendarmerie vehicles, were deployed in peripheral areas. In total, some 15,000 members of law enforcement will be mobilized on Monday to prevent tractors from entering “Paris and large cities,” announced Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin.
On Sunday, January 28, the French Government promised a “great defensive effort” in the face of farmers' plans to begin a “siege” of Paris starting Monday, while the agricultural group FNSEA called for “calm.” , but warned that the sector will continue “totally mobilized.”
While Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, back in the countryside, pledged to “move quickly” in response to farmers' anger, the president of France's main agricultural union urged “going much further.”
“We did not have a good experience of what happened last week (…) What we need are decisions that seem to us to change the panorama,” said Arnaud Rousseau, in front of the farmers blocking the A16 highway, near Beauvais (Oise), about 100 km from Paris.
Despite the truce, many road connections were still blocked on January 28, from Normandy to the Gard, passing through the Pyrénées-Atlantiques and the Meuse.
“There are going to be seven blockades around Paris,” carried out with “tractors and farmers,” said Clément Torpier, president of the group. Young farmers of Isle of France, where the capital is located, at French pay television channel BFM TV.
💬 “A military organization”
“Siège” de Paris: le président des Jeunes Agriculteurs d'Île-de-France évoque “sept points de blocage tout autour” de la capitale pic.twitter.com/MGtzr29HxV
— BFM Paris Île-de-France (@BFMParis) January 28, 2024
Given the warning, at 6:00 p.m. local time on Sunday, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin called a crisis meeting to discuss the issue.
This crisis meeting took place after the minister asked law enforcement representatives to put in place “important defensive measures” to prevent any blockade of Rungis, considered the market of the world's largest wholesalers, and the Parisian airports or the farmers' entrance to Paris.
This Sunday, the Police, including armored vehicles of the gendarmerie, had been deployed on the outskirts of Rungis.
The Minister of the Interior also announced that law enforcement forces would be asked to “act with restraint” and not “intervene at the blocking points”, but rather “secure” them.
“The position remains the same: law enforcement must act with great restraint,” declared the minister regarding possible actions by farmers.
“A week of risks”
Expressing their rejection of international competition that they consider unfair, this week, protesters stopped and emptied foreign trucks, mostly Spanish, Moroccan or Bulgarian, near Montélimar, a city in the southeast of the country. “We want to compete with the same weapons,” the farmers repeated at the different demonstration points.
Other farmers denounce European regulations, particularly at environmental level, which, they say, harm them.
“We are fed up because we no longer make a living from our job,” Nathalie Possémé, president of a local section of the Rural Coordination union, declared during a march. “If we want quality food, we have to pay for it,” she insisted.
Until now, farmers have managed to attract the attention of public opinion, which, according to polls, supports their demands, through concrete actions such as throwing slurry – remains of vegetables, crops, seeds – in front of government delegations and supermarkets and with road closures.
To curb discontent, On Friday, January 26, the Government promised a tax exemption for agricultural diesel, the commitment to negotiate in Brussels a new derogation from the obligation to leave 4% of land fallow and the acceleration of payments for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), of which France is the first beneficiary with 9 billion euros (about 9.8 billion dollars) a year.
Attal thus unveiled a series of emergency measures, which also include increased compensation for farmers whose animals have been affected by the epizootic hemorrhagic disease and strong sanctions against three food manufacturers who have failed to comply with pricing laws.
The Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, acknowledged “that, with these first measures”, not everything has yet been answered and “that it constitutes the discomfort and concern of farmers today.”
“And I am determined to move forward, with determination and speed,” declared the prime minister in La Riche. “I want things to be clarified and to see what complementary measures can be taken to confront this unfair competition,” declared the head of Government.
The peasant movement, however, maintains its demands. In Torpier's words: “there will be strict organization, another accident is out of the question”, after which claimed the lives of a farmer and his daughter in Ariège.
“I can confirm that we will have to go much further,” said agrarian leader Arnaud Rousseau, who this week presented dozens of complaints to the Government: “as long as these demands are not addressed, the mobilization will be total,” he said.
According to Arnaud Rousseau:
“It will be a week of various risks, either because the Government does not listen to us, or because the anger is such that each one will have to assume their responsibilities.”
The Government is “responsible”: Marine Le Pen
Faced with the Government's announcements, reactions are divided between those who consider that they have obtained satisfaction and those who think that the situation has not been resolved.
On the one hand, Joël Tournier, one of the spokespersons for the movement in Carbonne (Haute Garonne), affirms: “We have been heard, we have obtained some answers,” although “not everything will be perfect immediately,” he said when explaining the decision of lift the emblematic blockade of the A64 on Saturday.
But further south, in Bayonne, a hundred farmers continued to block the A63 bridge, the nerve center of traffic to and from Spain. Attal's statements “do not respond to anything at all,” Éric Mazain, a member of the board of directors of FDSEA 64, told AFP, who promised to “continue acting.”
Éric Ciotti, president of the Republican party, described the Government's responses as “ridiculously weak” and, in an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche, called for a minimum net monthly income of 1,500 euros for farmers.
For her part, during a visit to a farm in Radinghem-en-Weppes (north), far-right leader Marine Le Pen denounced the Government's agricultural policy. “They are not going to question the model” they support “at the European Union level,” “which is a model that is killing agriculture,” she said, adding that it was necessary to “remove agriculture from free trade agreements.”
He also did not want to comment on the announced blockade by Paris. “I am in favor of the Government taking action, and if the Government took action, there would be no lockdown,” he said. “Who is responsible for the blockades? The Government,” he added before turning around.
With AFP
Translated from its original French
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