Paris (AFP)

About 200 farmers demonstrated Thursday at midday in front of the premises of the general management of Pôle Emploi in Paris, in order to challenge the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron and obtain a common agricultural policy (CAP) more oriented towards employment, AFP noted.

Thirty of them entered the entrance hall to demand an interview with the general management of Pôle Emploi, in order to "negotiate a meeting with Emmanuel Macron", Véronique Marchesseau, secretary general of the Peasant Confederation.

Ms. Marchesseau added that she had obtained an interview with an assistant to the general manager of Pôle Emploi.

The action took place in peace, without blocking the comings and goings in the building.

The demonstrators, on the other hand, blocked the street with crates and straw bales in particular.

The administrative building was adorned with a banner "A CAP for employment".

Nicolas Girod, spokesperson for the Confédération paysanne, denounced "arbitrations of stability which will mean that we will continue to lose 10,000 to 15,000 peasants and peasants per year".

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"They will meet here," he lamented, pointing to the Pôle Emploi headquarters.

"We decided to come here, we decided to stay there. The weather is nice, it is not the ministry that we are calling upon, it is Macron!".

Agriculture Minister Julien Denormandie presented last Friday his first arbitrations for the next European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), for the period 2023-27.

Arbitrations deemed too little green and not sufficiently focused on small farms by organizations united in the collective Pour une autre Pac, of which the Confédération paysanne is a part.

"We, the agriculture that we are proposing, it provides jobs," said Ms. Marchesseau, who wants, among other things, a "cap on aid" to large farmers "for redistribution for as many people as possible" and a significant increase in the payment on the first hectares intended to support small and medium-sized farms.

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The Confédération paysanne, the third agricultural union, sent an open letter to Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, in which it deplores "no more and no less than the death sentence for peasant agriculture and a blank check for the development of agriculture industrial in all territories ".

The demonstration seemed set to last, around a barbecue organized in front of Pôle Emploi.

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