The mobilization of farmers throughout Europe reached a new milestone on Monday in France with the announced “siege” of Paris, which raised fears of a “week of all dangers” between angry farmers and French law enforcement.
Two highway blockages by tractors began around 2 p.m. local time, on the A13 to the northwest of the capital, and on the A4 to the east.
In total, eight motorway “blocking points” have been planned by the main trade unions, in order to create a “siege of the capital” announced “for an indefinite period”.
Faced with the risk of excesses, 15,000 members of the police were mobilized. As of Sunday evening, a large device including armored gendarmerie vehicles had been deployed near Rungis, the largest fresh produce market in the world, south of Paris, AFP noted.
French President Emmanuel Macron gave “instructions” to “guarantee that tractors do not go to Paris and large cities so as not to create extremely serious difficulties” and to ensure that Rungis “can operate as well as the Parisian airports of Orly and Roissy,” said the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin.
At the start of Monday afternoon, Mr. Macron announced that he would bring together several ministers at the Élysée at 3:15 p.m. for an “update on the agricultural situation”, before the Council of Ministers scheduled for 4 p.m. Mr. Macron is due to fly to Sweden late this afternoon for a state visit on Tuesday and Wednesday, before an extraordinary European Council in Brussels on Thursday.
Between highway blockages and tractor parades, agricultural discontent first manifested itself in December and January in Germany, before affecting France, but also Romania, Poland, and even Belgium.
While dozens of tractors organized a snail operation on Sunday on a highway in southern Belgium, and in Germany several ports including that of Hamburg, the largest in the country, were blocked Monday by farmers, the siege of Paris resonates as a new milestone in European mobilization.
Extreme climatic episodes, avian flu, soaring fuel prices or an influx of Ukrainian products exempt from customs duties, there is no shortage of common factors of discontent.
“Week of all dangers”
The new European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which has strengthened environmental obligations since 2023, and the legislation of the European “Green Deal” (or “Green Deal”) – even if they are not yet in force – are particularly crystallizing anger .
France may well be the first beneficiary of European agricultural subsidies with more than nine billion euros per year, but its farmers denounce a CAP which they believe is disconnected from the field.
“France is one of the only major agricultural countries whose market shares are declining,” pointed out a French senatorial report in September 2022. In twenty years, it has gone from second to sixth in the world for its exports – and to third in Europe. , after the Netherlands and Germany.
“Food imports into France are exploding: they have doubled since 2000 and sometimes represent more than half of the foodstuffs consumed in France in certain families,” this study continued.
European farmers denounce unfair competition, in particular because imported products are generally not subject to the same regulations.
The number of agricultural operations has also been divided by four in France in 50 years: from 1.5 million in 1970, there are now less than 400,000.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who visited a farm on Sunday, vowed to “move quickly” to respond to the anger, after announcing on Friday the abandonment of the increase in a tax on diesel from tractors or heavy sanctions against agri-food manufacturers who do not respect price laws.
Insufficient measures for the protesters.
The sequence which opens on Monday is that of a “week of all dangers, either because the government does not hear us, or because the anger will be such that everyone will then take their responsibilities”, warned Arnaud Rousseau, the president of the FNSEA, the first agricultural union.
The current movement is the third major crisis facing the executive since the start of Emmanuel Macron’s second five-year term, after the pension reform which triggered massive popular demonstrations throughout the country in 2023, and the adoption of a controversial immigration law in December.