France's farmers threaten further protests if demands not met
France's powerful farming unions said their nationwide protest actions would continue if their demands were not met. This comes after an inconclusive meeting with Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Monday evening. The repeated postponement of farming reforms first announced more than a year ago has aggravated the situation.
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The unions have demanded concrete government action to address their grievances, which they say include excessive financial charges and environmental protection rules as well as insufficient prices for their produce.
The growing anger of farmers, some of whom have already taken to direct action to express their frustration, is shaping up to be the first major challenge of President Emmanuel Macron's newly appointed government.
Following Monday evening's meeting with Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, the FNSEA union's leader, Arnaud Rousseau, said that "there will be a certain number of protests all week, and for as long as necessary if concrete actions were not announced".
The meeting with Attal comes after France's agriculture minister announced that a long-delayed reform package had again been postponed.
This week's protests would affect every part of France, Rousseau told the France Inter broadcaster.
"Tension is rising strongly, which is why we need concrete measures," he said.
As the protest action continued into Tuesday morning, three people connected to the FNSEA union were involved in a road accident near one of the protest sites.
Police said one person died and two others were seriously injured after a car drove into a dam at a farmers' blockade point near Pamiers in Ariège, in the south of France. Three people were taken into custody.
"Three of our members suffered a serious accident. A woman died, her husband and her daughter are in serious condition and were quickly taken care of by all the emergency services," Arnaud Rousseau told the press.
Farmers are not 'bandits'
The Young Farmers union (Jeunes Agriculteurs) leader Arnaud Gaillot – who was also at the meeting with Attal – told France 2 television earlier Monday that "we could be on the eve of a massive farmers' movement" if the government's response was not deemed satisfactory.
Over the weekend, Attal insisted that he was on the side of the farmers.
"Our farmers are not bandits, polluters, people who torture animals, as we sometimes hear," he told a meeting on Saturday in the southern Rhone region.
Farmers in the southern Occitanie region showed their anger with a blockade of the A64 motorway late on Thursday at Carbonne, around 45 kilometres southwest of Toulouse.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told reporters that no police had been dispatched to lift the blockades "because there has been no damage done".
However, after the meeting between the unions and Attal, members of the Young Farmers' Union in eastern France deactivated a toll gate on the A4 motoway, which connects Reims to Strasbourg.
Europe-wide anger
In addition to financial charges and environmental protection rules, farmers are also angry about progressive tax increases on the non-road-use diesel that is essential to their work.
Laurence Marandola, spokeswoman for France's third-biggest farmers union the Farmers' Confederation, told French news agency AFP that insufficient revenues for its members due to low produce prices were central to its demands.
"For us, the real crisis is about prices," she said.
Similar issues have led farmers in other European nations to also take action.
Fleets of tractors have brought traffic to a standstill in Germany and Romania, and farmers have also protested in the Netherlands and Poland.
They all face the challenge of inflation – caused in part by Russia's invasion of Ukraine – and what some see as unfair competition from Ukrainian agricultural imports.
In Britain on Monday, fruit and vegetable producers demonstrated in front of parliament against what they say are the unfair terms of their contracts with the main supermarkets.
Better wages
The French government's relations with the sector have not been helped by the repeated postponement of farming reforms first announced by Macron more than a year ago.
Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau announced yet another delay Sunday to a package that had been due to go before the government later this week.
More work needed to be done to simplify the measures, he said, an issue raised by many of the farmers currently protesting.
FNSEA wants an end to what they call the excessive "copy-pasting" of European norms into the French system – and for the full implementation of a 2021 law aimed at protecting farmers' wages.
(with AFP)
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