Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau visits a farm in Massay, January 20, 2024 (AFP/Pascal LACHENAUD)
Overtaken by the anger of farmers, the government decided to postpone its bill on agriculture for “a few weeks”, to respond to the sector’s demand for “simplification” while demonstrations and blockades continue in the countryside.
Three days before the Council of Ministers where he was to present a long-promised text “in favor of the renewal of generations in agriculture”, Marc Fesneau announced its postponement.
“Let’s give ourselves a few weeks,” declared the Minister of Agriculture to the “Grand Jury” RTL/Paris Première/M6/Le Figaro, specifying that the objective was to see the text debated in Parliament “in the first half of 2024” . He justified this delay in order to add “a simplification package” to the measures already announced to facilitate the installation of new farm managers.
Farmers block the A64 motorway – Toulouse-Bayonne – near Carbonne in Haute-Garonne, January 20, 2024 (AFP/Ed JONES)
A reason which responds to the main demand of breeders, cereal growers and other market gardeners who have been demonstrating for several days, particularly in the south-west where the A64 motorway linking Bayonne to Toulouse has been blocked since Thursday around fifty kilometers from the Pink City.
A filter dam was also to be installed in Tarascon-sur-Ariège, crossed by national road 20, an important route serving Andorra and Spain.
Demonstrations provoked by financial burdens and environmental standards considered too heavy. The situation is not unique to France: farmers’ movements are increasing in Europe, particularly in Germany where thousands of tractors converged on Berlin at the start of the week.
Farmers block the A64 motorway – Toulouse-Bayonne – near Carbonne in Haute-Garonne, January 20, 2024 (AFP/Ed JONES)
Like across the Rhine, a tax increase amplifies the fed up. Paris has in fact decided to gradually increase the taxation of non-road diesel. On the contrary, the leader of the Communist Party, Fabien Roussel, called on LCI to “maintain” the existing advantage on this fuel because farmers “have no other choice but to use it”.
– “Listen to this anger” –
Also on the right, the head of the Republican deputies, Olivier Marleix, asked the executive to “immediately renounce this measure”, affirming on France 3 that he “very clearly” supported the mobilization of farmers, “yet understood the blockages when it is necessary to make oneself heard.
“We have a duty to listen to this anger and respond to it,” insisted the boss of his party, Eric Ciotti, in a letter. He asked Prime Minister Gabriel Attal “to announce a pause in the normative drift”.
The oppositions are taking up the subject, less than five months before the European elections.
Starting with Jordan Bardella, president and head of the list of the National Rally, who castigated on Saturday from the wine-growing Gironde “Macron’s Europe which wants the death of our agriculture”.
At the same time, in the Rhône, Mr. Attal nevertheless defended the sector: “No, our farmers are not bandits, polluters, people who torture animals, as we can sometimes hear.”
Speech in the form of an outstretched hand to the agricultural unions, before receiving the FNSEA and Young Farmers in Matignon, Monday at 6 p.m. Organizations burned by the successive postponements of the bill promised more than a year ago by Emmanuel Macron and ultimately less ambitious than the “agricultural orientation law” initially announced.
“We are no longer a week away, but we will need very concrete things,” declared to AFP the vice-president of the FNSEA Luc Smessaert, who calls in particular to “stop the over-transposition” of standards European and “to apply 100%” the Egalim law “to ensure an income for farmers.
In the absence of rapid progress, the powerful union has already threatened to amplify the mobilization and disrupt the visit of the Head of State to the Agricultural Show, which will be held from February 24 in Paris.
© 2024 AFP
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