Farmers block traffic near Paris before the Prime Minister's speech

Barricades of tractors and hay bales blocked traffic around Paris for a second day on Tuesday, as hundreds of angry farmers blocked roads in and out of the French capital ahead of a major policy speech by the French prime minister.

Authorities closed entire sections of at least seven major highways around Paris due to the protests, sometimes spanning several kilometers, as farmers demanded solutions to their varied list of demands for agricultural subsidies, environmental regulations and foreign competition.

According to news media estimates by French authorities, around a thousand demonstrators with more than five hundred tractors formed the roadblocks around Paris.

Traffic bottlenecks, while significant, did not encircle the city and were not crippling, and wider disruptions to the French capital, such as delayed deliveries of food and other products, have so far been limited.

Protesting farmers also blocked roads in other parts of France. In the southwestern region, where the protests began and where they were particularly acute, farmers tried to block access to Toulouse's main airport by setting fire to hay bales.

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal was expected to make his first major policy speech on Tuesday since his appointment by President Emmanuel Macron this month.

Mr Attal has tried to appease the protesters by scrapping plans to end state subsidies for fuel used by farmers, and promising faster help for livestock sick with a bleeding disorder. recently hit the southwestamong other measures.

But those efforts appear not to have reassured many of the protesters.

The government has promised further measures, but it was not immediately clear whether Mr Attal would use his speech to announce them. The speech, a wide-ranging presentation of his government's plans to the lower house of parliament, was planned before farmers' protests broke out across France last week.

Arnaud Rousseau, head of the largest and most powerful farmers' union in France, told Europe 1 radio Tuesday that its members were “fully determined.” But, he added, “our goal is not disorder,” and urged “calm” and “nonviolent” protests.

That strategy is being challenged by smaller, more radical unions and farmer groups. Some of them have suggested disrupting the wholesale food market in Rungis, just south of Paris – one of the largest in Europe and a crucial source of produce for the capital region.

Authorities have already deployed armored police vehicles there to prevent possible raids. Police also tried to slow down a convoy of around 200 tractors leaving south-west France on Monday with Rungis in their sights.

Mr Macron has so far said little publicly about farmers' anger. He was on an official trip to India during much of the protests last week, and is currently in Sweden on a state visit.

In a speech to the French community in Stockholm on Tuesday, Macron did not explicitly mention the protests. But he said it was important to continue to change France “regardless of the current challenges and difficulties.”

On Thursday, Macron will attend a European Union summit in Brussels, where he is expected to lobby on behalf of French farmers.

For example, many of them are against a free trade deal currently being negotiated between the bloc and Mercosur, an alliance of South American countries, because they say there are insufficient guarantees that those countries will have to apply the same environmental and sanitary measures. standards as European farmers. France has long opposed the deal in its current form, but French farmers' unions want it to be abolished completely.