Despite the executive's attempts to convince the demonstrators to stop their mobilization, the farmers approached Paris and the Rungis wholesale market on Wednesday January 31.
A sign of the advance of farmers towards the capital, armored gendarmerie vehicles were deployed Tuesday evening on the A6 a few kilometers from Rungis, near Chilly-Mazarin (Essonne), where tractors from the FDSEA of Seine-et-Marne, without incident, according to the police. Even if on certain dams, the situation has become somewhat tense in Île-de-France.
The farmers also continue their progress towards Lyon, with the aim of blockading France's second city. Tractors blocked the A89, which links Lyon to Clermont-Ferrand, at the end of the day.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal assured Tuesday that there must "be a French agricultural exception" and promised that the government would be "there, without any ambiguity" to respond to the current agricultural crisis, in his general policy speech before the National Assembly.
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THE DEBATE - Gabriel Attal, convincing? © FRANCE 24
Despite these declarations, accompanied by some new measures, the mobilization does not weaken: on Tuesday, the territorial intelligence services identified nearly 120 blockage points, with 12,000 farmers mobilized, more than 6,000 tractors, at the national level, even if Brussels has outlined concessions, particularly on the issue of fallow land.
Statements that do not convince
The Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau is also expected in Brussels on Wednesday afternoon "for a series of interviews aimed at accelerating the treatment of European emergencies", his office indicated on Tuesday.
Recalling that the agricultural crisis would not be resolved "in a few days", Gabriel Attal said he was ready to "go further", promising for example that European aid from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) would be paid "by on March 15" and additional tax assistance for breeders.
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Statements which left demonstrators, like Johanna Trau, a grain grower and breeder in Ebersheim, skeptical about the payment of CAP aid in March.
“Already some measures take three or four years to be applied... Here I ask to see!”, she declared Tuesday in a convoy of hundreds of tractors blocking the A35, the motorway which runs along Strasbourg.
“We don’t necessarily want to be lulled into aid, we especially want remunerative prices,” added the farmer, as if echoing the Peasant Confederation.
The third agricultural union, classified on the left, called for "blocking the purchasing centers" of mass distribution.
The union reiterated its demand for a ban on purchasing agricultural products below their cost price, on the eve of an interview with the Prime Minister. The "Conf'" criticized its general policy declaration, considering that it brought "no long-term perspective" to the peasant world.
A movement on a European scale
Received Tuesday evening in Matignon for nearly three hours, the FNSEA and the Young Farmers did not comment publicly on the executive's latest words.
President Emmanuel Macron, during a state visit to Sweden, for his part pledged to defend several demands of French farmers in Brussels, on Ukraine, fallow land and the trade agreement with Latin countries. Americans from Mercosur.
The movement of anger is in any case spreading across the continent: after demonstrations in Germany, Poland, Romania, Belgium and Italy in recent weeks, the major Spanish agricultural unions have announced "mobilizations" during the " next weeks".
With AFP
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