Paris (AFP)

About 200 peasants from all over France demonstrated Thursday for more than five hours in and in front of the Pôle Emploi headquarters in Paris to demand from the executive a CAP that preserves agricultural employment, before being evacuated by the police, including one limb was injured.

The demonstration was completely dispersed around 7:00 p.m. by the police, in some confusion after several charges on the demonstrators to evacuate the site.

The police headquarters reported on Twitter that a police officer was "injured by a projectile throw and hospitalized".

120 protesters were fined, she said.

Nicolas Girod, spokesperson for the Confédération paysanne, denounced to AFP "pressure on trade unions": "we want to piss off people who want to demonstrate, who want to assert strongly but in a non-violent manner" their demands.

Thirty activists invaded the entrance hall at the end of the morning to demand an interview with the general management of Pôle Emploi, in order to "negotiate a meeting with Emmanuel Macron", explained to AFP Véronique Marchesseau, secretary general of the Confédération paysanne.

In front of the building, a little more than 150 demonstrators, men and women, blocked the street, with a force of straw bales and wooden crates, organizing a barbecue in a friendly atmosphere, a stone's throw from the ring road.

Their goal: to obtain from the Head of State a European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) more oriented towards employment, a little less than a week after the presentation by the Minister of Agriculture Julien Denormandie of the way in which the EU aid envelope will be distributed by France for the period 2023-2027.

Arbitrations deemed too little green and not sufficiently favorable to small farms by the organizations united in the collective "Pour une autre PAC", including the Confédération paysanne.

"We have an appointment proposed by Paul Delduc, agricultural advisor to the Elysée. We wanted a meeting with Macron of course, but we are going to go", explained Mr. Girod, who sees "a march for go see Macron later ".

- "Insupportable" -

He had previously denounced arbitration "which will mean that we will continue to lose 10,000 to 15,000 peasants per year".

"They will meet here," he lamented, pointing to the Pôle Emploi headquarters, in front of which empty boots had been symbolically placed.

"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 in order to have "a redistribution for a maximum of people "and a significant increase in payment for the first hectares in order to support small and medium-sized farms.

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Because today, "the more hectares we have, the more we touch," lamented Robert Grosjean, 85, formerly living in the Marne, came out of “citizen” motivation.

Because if among the demonstrators, there were many farmers in exercise, retirees had also made the trip.

"I came for my children, who are young people who have settled in, who will not see much of this CAP," Marick Meunier, a former farmer from the Rhône, told AFP.

"We are very angry, there is so much urgency to change things that this status quo is unbearable," denounced Laurence Marandola, head of the CAP at the Confédération paysanne.

According to her, the current distribution of CAP aid "has not enabled farmers to generate income. It is a social plan, we have lost 15,000 farmers per year since 1988."

"As long as there is still the possibility of changing things, we will put pressure. Our troops are determined," assured Ms. Marchesseau.

© 2021 AFP