PARIS (Reuters) – Prime Minister Gabriel Attal declared on Tuesday during his general policy speech to the National Assembly that he wanted to carry out a “rearmament” of the sector and enshrine food sovereignty in law, in response to the anger of farmers, which blocked several arteries leading to Paris.
“Our farmers embody fundamental values such as work, effort and freedom of enterprise (…) Our agriculture is a strength, there must be a French agricultural exception,” said the head of government.
Gabriel Attal met representatives of agricultural unions for more than three hours on Monday. The discussions focused on unfair competition, transposition, Ukraine and the Mercosur agreement, indicated the president of the FNSEA, Arnaud Rousseau.
Speaking in the morning on Europe 1, the boss of the first agricultural union stressed that the determination of farmers was “total”, while various roads were once again blocked across France.
“We are first asking for symbolic emergency measures because we need them immediately to get going again, to understand that there are signs being given,” he said. Gabriel Attal “replied to us (…) that he had started and that he wanted to go further.”
Arnaud Rousseau also called for order and rigor. “The risk is obviously the excesses, the violence, the excess that we do not want. Once again, our objective is not disorder, our objective is to produce to feed,” said he declared.
On a state visit to Sweden, Emmanuel Macron called for the agricultural crisis not to be blamed “on Europe”. The president’s entourage said he would discuss the issue on Thursday in Brussels with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
For the second consecutive day, blockade points were set up in Île-de-France and around Paris.
Several motorways were partially closed on Tuesday around Paris, including the A1, the A4, the A6 and the A13 towards the capital, according to the Sytadin website.
At the call of certain unions, including the Rural Coordination, a convoy of farmers headed Tuesday morning towards the Rungis market (Val-de-Marne) from Lot-et-Garonne.
The tractors, blocked on the A20 in Vienne by the police, bypassed the police barrier by forcing the barrier to reach small adjacent roads, according to France Bleu Périgord.
Arnaud Rousseau said he was against the idea of blocking the Rungis market, the “belly of Paris”.
“We have, since the start of this action, made the choice never to go to Rungis because our objective is not to starve the French, we want to feed them,” he declared.
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, declared on Sunday that “the occupation of the Rungis market, Parisian airports and the city of Paris and large provincial towns” represented a “red line not to be crossed”.
(Writing by Zhifan Liu and Jean Terzian, editing by Kate Entringer)
©2024 Thomson Reuters, all rights reserved. Reuters content is the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters or its third party content providers. Any copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. “Reuters” and the Reuters Logo are trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies.