French farmers besiege Paris in growing stalemate

Irate farmers deployed tractors to block main roads into and out of Paris on Monday, in a widening standoff that has left the capital facing disruption and become the first major test for France's newly appointed Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.

Last week, Mr Attal rushed to agricultural areas in the south of France, offering a series of quick concessions as he tried to counter growing demonstrations by food producers across the country. But the steps failed to satisfy many farmers.

Their grievances are so varied that the protests represent an increasingly precarious moment for the government as it challenges easy solutions. Many farmers say foreign competition is unfair, wages are too low and regulations from both the government and the European Union have become stifling.

“I am determined to go further,” Mr Attal said on Sunday after visiting farmers in the Indre-et-Loire region of central France. But he also warned that “there are things that cannot change overnight.”

On Monday, hundreds of farmers from the Paris region and elsewhere in France converged on the French capital for what they called an indefinite “siege” announced by the country's main farmers' unions. The action was a major escalation after a week of protests and highway roadblocks that had already steadily gripped the country.

The main farmers' unions said they did not intend to storm Paris or completely blockade the capital, but that they had decided to block eight major roads within a radius of five to twenty-four kilometers around the capital, while similar barricades and traffic delays were expected elsewhere , also in cities like Lyon.

“Our goal is not to harass the French or ruin their lives,” said Arnaud Rousseau, head of the FNSEA, France's largest farmers' union. told RTL radio. “Our goal is to put pressure on the government.”

The unions hope to organize an operation with “military” precision, with safety measures to prevent fatal accidents such as the one that killed two people last week, and with rolling shifts to staff barricades for days.

“We are increasing the pressure because we know that if it is far from Paris, the message will not be heard,” Mr. Rousseau said.

Authorities warned residents to brace for extremely disrupted traffic and deployed 15,000 police and gendarmes across France to secure the protests. President Emmanuel Macron's government has so far moved cautiously in its response to the movement, which has support from more than 80 percent of the public, according to opinion polls.

“We are not here for a showdown,” said French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin. said Sunday.

Mr Darmanin said security forces would take a “defensive position” to prevent farmers from crossing “red lines”, such as entering major cities, blocking airports or disrupting Rungis, the world's largest wholesale food market. just south of Paris.

After meeting with farmers last week, Mr. Attal pledged to simplify bureaucratic regulations, speed up emergency aid and enforce laws aimed at guaranteeing farmers a living wage in price negotiations with retailers and distributors. He also said the government is scrapping plans to reduce state subsidies on diesel fuel used in trucks and other machinery.

But the steps have so far failed to quell the farmers' anger, which is deep and varied. Vine growers, livestock farmers, grain farmers and other producers have voiced widespread complaints about low wages, complex red tape, environmental regulations, unfair foreign competition and skyrocketing energy and fertilizer prices resulting from the war in Ukraine.

Other issues are more specific – ranging from access to water to livestock epidemics – and farmers have presented a long, patchwork of demands to the government, although some can only be addressed at European Union level.

In Agen, a city in southwestern France where protests have been particularly fierce, farmers embarking on an unwieldy 600-kilometer (370-mile) journey to Paris said they did not trust Mr. Attal, who rushed to the area last week promising to boost agriculture above all else. all the rest.

“They are just words,” said Théophane de Flaujac, 28, who joined the protest from his family's vegetable and grain farm, which he says has come under increasing pressure as distributors opt for cheaper imports from Spain and elsewhere without the same strict environmental regulations as France. There were some protesters last week emptied trucks transport foreign products.

“He used to say he would put education first,” Mr. de Flaujac said of Mr. Attal. 'Now he says it's agriculture. After he will say it is transportation, and then health care.

The several dozen farmers who left Agen on tractors decorated with protest signs and French flags were members of Rural Coordination, a radical, right-wing and anti-EU group that split from the FNSEA in 1991.

Last week, these farmers laid siege to Agen, dumping rubble in front of symbolic buildings such as the train station, banks and social service offices that cater to the farmers. The farmers also barricaded the gate of the ornate prefecture building with giant tractor tires, wooden pallets and hay bales, and sprayed it liberally with liquid fertilizer.

Now they have set their sights on Paris, which they expected to reach on Tuesday.

“We have done everything we can here,” said Karine Duc, 38, an organic grape grower and co-chair of the local Rural Coordination Department. “We are going to Paris because we need answers and real action.”

“This is our last fight,” she added, wearing her union hat mustard yellow hat. “Farmers feel that if we don't succeed, we will be crushed.”

It is unclear how long the unions can maintain a united front for the protests, which were started by a handful of farmers rebelling against a local chapter of the FNSEA.

National Coordination wants to disrupt Rungis, the wholesale food market on which Paris depends for much of its food, while FNSEA and other more mainstream unions have ruled it out. The authorities are not taking any chances and have already stationed armored police vehicles in the market.

Édouard Lynch, a French historian who specializes in agriculture, said the protests were influenced by union activity in the run-up to the Chamber of Agriculture elections, which are crucial in rural areas because they provide training and distribute agricultural subsidies. The rivalry itself gave an unpredictable impetus to the protests.

“Obviously you can see them competing with each other now,” said Mr Lynch, a professor of contemporary French history at the University of Lyon. “Countrywide coordination has been very effective, which is why the FNSEA must continue to push.”

Farmers are also turning up the heat ahead of a European Union summit in Brussels on Thursday, which Macron is expected to attend.

Some of their anger is specifically directed at the EU's Green Deal, which aims to ensure the bloc meets its climate targets but leaves farmers across Europe feeling unfairly victimized by new environmental obligations.

Marc Fesneau, French Minister of Agriculture, told France 2 television that he would insist on maintaining an exemption from an EU obligation for larger farms to leave 4 percent of arable land fallow or use it for other “non-productive” features such as bushes – to preserve biodiversity – if they want to receive crucial agricultural subsidies.