France’s government on Thursday sought to find answers to farmers blocking motorways and demonstrating at public buildings across the country after a fuel tax rise ignited long-standing resentments.
It is the first crisis faced by recently installed Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who summoned his Economy, Environment, and Agriculture Ministers to decide on aid measures and fend off a possible blockade of the capital, months before European Parliament elections.
Mr. Attal would make “concrete proposals for simplification measures” to aid farmers on Friday, Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau’s office said after the talks.
The Ministers had discussed “farming issues, especially off-road diesel, animal husbandry, and pay,” the Ministry added.
Farmers were out in force on a number of motorways, ring roads and roundabouts on Thursday, two days after a farmer and her daughter died at a roadblock. Hundreds of tractors drove through Rennes and Nantes in the west of the country, blasting horns, brandishing mock gallows and setting off smoke bombs.
“We are totally fed up because we can no longer make a living from our profession,” said Nathalie Posseme, a local Confederation Rurale union official.
“If people want quality food, they are going to have to pay for it,” she added.
Elsewhere in France, hundreds of farmers blocked the M35 motorway near Strasbourg in the east while dozens of tractors rolled along the A1 motorway near Lille, close to the Belgian border.
Some routes were blocked around Avignon and Marseille in the south, according to traffic information website Bison Fute.
And in the southwest, there was a tractor go-slow around the Bordeaux ring road.
More aggressive protests included winegrowers forcing entry to two warehouses in southern city Beziers. Some demonstrators near Montelimar in southern France halted and emptied foreign trucks bringing Spanish, Moroccan or Bulgarian produce including tomatoes, peppers, and avocados, FDSEA farmers’s union official Sandrine Roussin said.
Farmers say they are squeezed from multiple directions, caught between supermarket and industrial buyers crushing their margins, and environmental rules on issues like leaving land fallow and pesticide use.
‘Immediate answers’
The last straw for many was the government’s decision to phase out a tax break on diesel fuel for farm machinery by 2030.
A new diesel tax rebate could be one of the government’s forthcoming measures, while some lawmakers also want minimum prices introduced for farm produce.
The powerful FNSEA farmers’ union demanded late on Wednesday “immediate answers on pay”, urgent aid for sectors worst hit by the crisis and, in the long term, “a plan to reduce regulations”.
“We are talking about several hundred million euros,” FNSEA chief Arnaud Rousseau said.
‘Division, polarisation’
President Emmanuel Macron’s government is at pains to avoid a repeat of the massive 2018-19 “yellow vest” protests — also triggered by a rise in diesel prices.
It has kept a nervous eye on recent mass turnouts by farmers in Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands that have also raised concern in Brussels.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen acknowledged on Thursday “increasing division and polarisation” in the agri-food sector, saying there is a “sense of urgency that things have to improve”.
The protests have seen a rare alliance between rival farmers’ unions.
Fishermen joined the farmers protesting in Rennes, angered by a far-ranging ban along the Atlantic coast supposed to spare dolphins and porpoises — at an estimated cost of tens of millions of euros to the 450 boats affected.
And the left-wing CGT union federation called its members to “go and meet” farmers, hoping to “bring together the demands of workers, agricultural workers and farmers”.
In a bid to keep tensions low, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin on Wednesday ordered local authorities to exercise “restraint” and deploy police only as a “last resort”.
Speaking at a motorway roadblock, FNSEA head Rousseau said “at this stage” there were no plans to blockade Paris.
But Regis Desmureaux, his deputy for the Oise department north of the capital, told broadcaster BFMTV: “We’re moving forward about 20 kilometres (12.5 miles) a day and we’ll definitely be at the doorstep of Paris on Friday or Saturday.”
The head of the Jeunes Agriculteurs (“Young Farmers”) union, Arnaud Gaillot, said blockading the capital would be a “last resort”, but urged the government to avoid “paralysing the country”.
Tractor-driving farmers staged another go-slow early on Thursday on a major road running west of the capital.
