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The anger of the French farmers did not subside over the weekend. The capital is now threatened with a longer lockdown.
France’s farmers are not happy with the concessions the government promised them over the weekend. They have increased the pressure and are moving closer to Paris with roadblocks and tractors. They want to seal off the capital and are threatening a siege that could last longer.
Fed up with increasingly strict regulations
The range of their demands is wide. The large national farmers’ association listed around 120 points last week, explains a farmer from the Oise department on French television. In his department, it is primarily the EU regulations that France wants to tighten. The controls are also too strict.
Many farmers come to Paris from far away. For example from the southwest, the region between Toulouse and Bordeaux, where the protest began around ten days ago.
Their march to the siege of Paris is also staged in the media. The news channel France Info is traveling with a farmer who left Agen early in the morning. The journey to Paris will last at least until Tuesday evening. So there’s enough time for interviews from the driver’s cab of the tractor.
Legend:
Tractors are jammed on the A15 motorway near Argenteuil, north of Paris, on Monday, January 29, 2024.
Keystone/EPA/Yoan Valat
The farmer from Agen emphasizes that simplifying the standards is only part of the demands: “We are also demanding free deferral of loans for a year and higher prices for wheat.” He is convinced that the protest will have broad support from the population. This was shown to him by the spontaneous applause on the journey to Paris.
First Paris and if necessary all the way to Brussels
If this protest doesn’t work, they will continue to Brussels if necessary, the farmer from Agen continued. He is traveling with a convoy of the farmers’ union “Coordination rurale”, a small organization that is close to the Rassemblement National.
Your destination is the Rungis wholesale market, Europe’s largest food distribution center. They want to shut down this central hub in the grocery store, at least for a few days. So that the population of Paris can feel what shortages in the supply of food would mean.
Not everyone wants to go that far
For many farmers, however, a blockade of Rungis is too radical. The president of the young farmers “Jeunes Agriculteurs” (JA), for example, who have so far shaped the protest together with the national farmers’ association.
JA President Arnaud Gaillot thinks it’s not a good idea to harass citizens: “According to surveys, the farmers’ protest is supported by 90 percent of the population. If the supply is blocked, the mood among the population could change.”
Red line in Rungis?
A farmers’ blockade at the distribution center in Rungis is also risky because the government has drawn a red line here. The police deployed around 15,000 police officers over the weekend – also to prevent this blockade.
If there actually are clashes between farmers and the police, this would be a clear break with the previous strategy. So far, the police have observed the farmers’ protest but avoided any direct confrontation.