Barricaded highways and a deadly incident as French farmers revolt

A car crashed into a barrier set up by protesting French farmers on Tuesday, killing a woman and injuring her husband and daughter, as France faces growing anger in rural areas over perceived over-regulation and higher diesel prices.

The new government led by Gabriel Attal, the 34-year-old prime minister, faced a crisis for the first time as barricades spread across highways in the country's southwest. The protests mirrored similar demonstrations in Germany, driven by a sense of marginalization among farmers that the far right was quick to exploit.

“This is the France of the forgotten,” Jordan Bardella, the president of the anti-immigrant National Rally party, said on Saturday during a visit to the Bordeaux region. “The fight for agriculture is also the fight against the extermination of the countryside, the cry of a French people that does not want to die.”

The discontent in rural areas has also contributed to a surge in support for the far-right Alternative for Germany party, known as AfD, and the Dutch Freedom Party, led by Geert Wilders. A political, economic and cultural divide between the populations of the big cities and what the French call “the periphery” has been a factor in the rise of anti-establishment, nationalist movements from the United States to Western Europe.

At one of France's barriers, in the southwestern Ariège region, a car carrying three foreigners drove through a wall of packed straw and crashed into a family of ranchers from the village of Saint-Félix-de-Tournegat, local authorities said . One woman died instantly. Her husband and teenage daughter are in critical condition, the Ariège prefecture said.

“The nation is in shock and expresses its solidarity,” Attal said in a statement.

The prosecutor's office in Foix, a town near the scene of the accident, said that three Armenians in the car had been taken into custody as part of a manslaughter investigation, but that “the facts do not seem to support the theory of an intentional act to support.”

The incident, whatever its nature, raised tensions in the standoff between the government and farmers angry over a proposal to eliminate a tax break on the diesel fuel used in tractors, which are typically stored in large tanks farms is delivered. A proposed increase in car diesel prices sparked the Yellow Vests protest movement in 2018, which sparked violent clashes in Paris and brought large parts of France to a standstill.

“We will stay here as long as the government does not announce strong measures, and if necessary we will blockade Paris,” Cédric Baron, a farmer manning a barrier near Carbonne, south of Toulouse, told Le Monde. , a daily newspaper.

Farmers are also angry about the spread of what they see as stifling “norms” emanating from the European Union and the French government. These rules have become so all-encompassing that, in the words of Emmanuelle Ducros, writing in the daily L'Opinion: “Being a farmer in France is tantamount to reading Kafka on a tractor.”

The regulations are so widespread that almost none of France's 66 million hectares of agricultural land remains untouched. They cover pesticides, fertilizers, bird protection, wetland conservation, the obligation to leave 4 percent of the land fallow, mandatory replanting of fields after harvest – all this and much more, regulated under an increasingly complex system of zoning, which means that farms are being cut down. in segments with different rules.

Farmers see many of the regulations as a reflection of the obsession with environmental issues of 'elite' city dwellers and officials at the European Union headquarters in Brussels, coupled with ignorance of the practical hardships faced by rural workers who focus more on fetching of the end of the crisis. than the goal of a carbon-free economy.

Facing mounting anger, Marc Fesneau, France's agriculture minister, announced on Tuesday that a proposed new law for the agricultural sector would be postponed “a few weeks” to respond to demands for “a simplification”. The Prime Minister, Mr Attal, has been meeting with major farmer unions in a bid to defuse the crisis.

As the European Parliament elections approach in June, the National Rally has portrayed the European Union as 'the enemy of the people', as Mr Bardella has described it, while portraying itself as the representative of 'real people' – in in contrast to the urban elites. .

The AfD has done much the same in Germany, which is facing widespread street protests sparked in part by a decision to phase out subsidies for agricultural diesel fuel. On January 15, thousands of farmers gathered around Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, with some demanding the government's resignation even though a proposed tax on agricultural vehicles had been withdrawn.

Christian Lindner, Germany's finance minister, told the crowd he would make no more concessions. Although the head of the farmers' association announced more protests if the federal government did not change its budget plans, the subsequent protests were overshadowed by massive protests against the AfD.

President Macron appointed Mr. Attal this month to head a center-right government, in part to lead the far-right National Rally; its longtime leader, Marine le Pen; and the charm offensive of her youthful lieutenant, Mr. Bardella. It is already clear that the task will be difficult.

Christopher F. Schuetze in Berlin and Aurelien Breeden in Paris contributed to the reporting.