Raquel VillaécijaParis Correspondent

Paris Correspondent

Updated Sunday, January 28, 2024-15:37

In an attempt to defuse the crisis unleashed by farmers, who have been protesting for 10 days and

want to block Paris this Monday

, the French Government has taken up their arguments and criticized the "unfair competition" from countries like Italy or Spain. ""We will continue to advance to fight against unfair competition.

"Rules are imposed on our farmers that others are not

," said Prime Minister Gabriel Attal this Sunday, appointed to the position just a few weeks ago and facing his first crisis.

Attal

has acknowledged that the measures he announced two days ago to try to calm the anger of the countryside "have been insufficient" and says there will be more in the coming days. Specifically, he promised a simplification of the bureaucratic processes that producers have to go through and also the elimination of the tax on diesel used by tractors.

It hasn't been enough. Farmers

denounce that phytosanitary standards are stricter

in France than in other countries, such as Spain or Italy, so their product is subject to more strict (and expensive) quality rules than foreign products, which they consider to be unfair competition.

In recent days,

roads have been blocked in 85 regions

and some of the producers have dumped the contents of foreign trucks in the south of the country, as a measure of protest. Attal said today that he will propose to community partners "more measures" to protect "French food sovereignty."

"French sovereignty"

This is a concept that the French Government uses a lot, but also the extreme right of Marine Le Pen, which demands that the entry of foreign products be prevented and the exit from free trade agreements. In an interview with the BFM channel, the Minister of Agriculture,

Marc Fesneau

, ruled out "a closure of borders" for Spanish or Italian products, as Le Pen had requested, since France imports, but also exports to other countries.

He also warned producers that

blocking Paris could cause the movement to lose popular support.

The producers intend to paralyze the accesses to Paris with their tractors starting this Monday and "indefinitely" if they are not given solutions. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, has called a meeting this Sunday to plan a security device and try to prevent it.

Since the beginning of the protest,

the Government has not wanted to send police officers

to contain the protest, considering that it is currently peaceful. Yes, there have been some episodes of violence, such as the burning of some buildings, but, in reality, containing the protest could have the opposite effect, and further inflame the flame.

The Government wants to avoid a crisis like that of the yellow vests, which began as a demand for the increase in the price of gasoline and ended up paralyzing the country and with a lot of violence. Not only Attal has gone to the field to try to calm the farmers.

Marine Le Pen has met with producers

in the north of the country, where she has taken the opportunity to remember that the workers' arguments "are the same" that she has been demanding from her party. In June there are European elections and his party leads the polls.

Le Pen has asked to defend "our sovereignty and food security", "We must apply what the National Regrouping has been asking for years", said the politician, who has criticized free trade agreements that allow importing "productions that are not subject to to the same rules."

"We have imposed very strict rules on imports that do not respect those same rules

," said Le Pen.

If the main agricultural unions are preparing to paralyze Paris this Monday starting at noon, another organization, Rural Coordination, assured that they will travel to the capital to block the international market of Rungis (outskirts), considered the largest for fresh products in the world.