The government promised on Sunday an “important defensive device” in the face of the desire of farmers to begin a “siege” of Paris from Monday, while the FNSEA called for “calm” but warned that the mobilization of the profession would remain “total”. While Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, back on the ground, vowed to “move quickly” to respond to the anger of farmers, the president of the first French agricultural union urged the government to “go much further”.
“We didn’t cope well with what happened last week: the communications, the cameras, the straw bale and all that, it’s not our thing. What we need is “These are decisions that we feel change the software,” said Arnaud Rousseau, facing farmers blocking the A16 motorway near Beauvais in the Oise.
“The police must act with great moderation”
Despite a lull, the situation threatens to become tense with a plan to block access to Paris on Monday from 2 p.m. “Everything will be organized in security around several blocking points on important strategic motorway axes, there will be seven blocking points all around Paris”, which will be manned “by tractors, farmers”, affirmed Clément Torpier, president of the Young Farmers Ile-de-France, on BFMTV. According to him, “there is going to be a military organization, there is no question that another accident will happen” after the one which cost the lives of a farmer and her daughter in Ariège.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin asked law enforcement officials on Sunday to put in place “an important defensive system in order to prevent any blockage” by farmers of the Rungis market, the Ile-de-France airports and “the prohibit any entry into Paris,” according to his ministry. “The posture remains the same: the police must act with great moderation,” we also explained at Place Beauvau.
The police, it was added, “only intervene as a last resort and in the only case where the integrity of people is threatened or public or private buildings/property exposed to serious damage ( for example actions targeting foreign trucks)”.
15,000 members of the police mobilized
Gérald Darmanin announced on Sunday evening that 15,000 members of the police would be mobilized on Monday to prevent tractors from entering “Paris and the big cities” and the blockades of the Rungis market and the Ile-de-France airports.
Speaking at the end of an interministerial crisis meeting in which the Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau, participated, the Minister of the Interior also announced a “moderation” requested from the forces of order who should not “intervene on the blocking points” but “secure” them.