The account is not there for French farmers. The blockades continue on Thursday February 1, particularly around Paris, where the police are controlling access to the Rungis market. Emmanuel Macron must go to Brussels, where the European agricultural crisis is present on the sidelines of a summit of the Twenty-Seven.

The French President will meet before 10 a.m. with the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen about the "future of European agriculture", announced the Élysée, before an extraordinary European summit devoted to the EU budget and aid to Ukraine.

The aid released on Wednesday by the French government, like the concessions from the European Commission - on fallow land and Ukrainian imports - did not seem to find favor in the eyes of the profession, also mobilized in Italy, Spain and Germany.

Also read “Less income”: compulsory fallow, a symbol of farmers’ tensions

Several hundred tractors should converge in Brussels, according to the organizers. The main Italian agricultural union confederation, Coldiretti, announced that it would go there with a thousand of its members to denounce "the madness which threatens agriculture".

On Wednesday evening, French and Belgian farmers blocked a point on the border "together", denouncing "the distortion of competition" ratified by free trade agreements, and demanding "very strong announcements" on Thursday.

Tensions around the Rungis market

In France, farmers are maintaining pressure on the highways around Paris, where seven blockage points were active on Wednesday evening, hindering access to the capital without preventing it.

The stated objective of the Rural Coordination, not followed by the other unions, of invading the Rungis market, the food hub of the Paris region, took shape on Wednesday afternoon: 91 people were arrested at the end of the day. -noon for entering the wholesale market on foot, where “degradations” were committed, according to the Paris police prefect.

But the convoy of tractors targeting Rungis has not yet arrived: one part, blocked in Loiret by the police, decided to spend the night there, another group stopped in Étampes in Essonne.

In the country, more than 150 gatherings - filter dams, blockades or demonstrations - were recorded on Wednesday, notably around Orange, Nîmes, Arles, Aix-en-Provence, Grenoble and Nantes. In Lyon, the encirclement was almost complete, apart from a final road junction.

“Today, the account is not there. What will allow us to live and survive is our selling prices,” denounced Laurent Saint-Affre, delegate of the Departmental Federation of Operators’ Unions. (FDSEA) met in Rodez, among 400 tractors mobilized in the city center.

“Massive imports” from Ukraine 

Faced with discontent, the European Commission has proposed granting for 2024 a "partial" exemption from the fallow obligations imposed by the CAP and is considering a mechanism limiting imports from Ukraine (poultry, eggs and sugar).

If Paris welcomed the fact that Brussels had "responded to France's requests", the derogation comes "late" and the measures on imports remain "insufficient", regretted Copa-Cogeca, the organization of the majority agricultural unions in the EU.

“Twenty-nine active substances (fungicides, insecticides, herbicides) still usable in Ukraine are prohibited in the European Union,” recalled the General Confederation of Beet Planters on Wednesday, worried to see “massive imports” of sugar continuing: 700,000 tons for the current campaign compared to 20,000 tons before the war.

European policy too complex, incomes too low, inflation, foreign competition, accumulation of standards, soaring fuel prices: the same demands are found in most European countries.

Another subject of friction remains unresolved in Brussels: the Commission is currently negotiating a free trade agreement with the Mercosur countries (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay) which worries the agricultural sector and which Paris does not want as it stands. current.

Read also Faced with the distress of the agricultural world, the questioning of free trade agreements

The head of the environmentalist list in the European elections, Marie Toussaint, asked Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday to work during the summit to “form a coalition of member states against the EU-Mercosur agreement”.

With AFP

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