The wave of protests unleashed by French farmers against the local economic situation, as well as the current siege that they are carrying out around Paris with the aim of blocking land access to the capital of Franceforced the government of that country to request a stop to the negotiations for the agreement between the Mercosur and the European Union (EU).
The sector denounces the drop in income, low pensions, administrative complexity, inflation of environmental standards and foreign competition, especially the Mercosur-EU agreement. These claims only intensified the opposition to it in its current form on the part of the French President Emmanuel Macron.
According to the French Presidency, Macron will board on Thursday with the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyenthe trade agreement and is expected to request an end to the current round of negotiations.
French farmers carried out their threat and began blocking several highways around Paris on tractors this Monday to denounce their economic situation, in an increasingly tense fight with the government, AFP reported.
In all cardinal points, traffic was disrupted on eight motorways around the capital of the EU’s second largest economy, with sections closed a few dozen kilometers from Paris, according to the Sytadin website.
Farmers will continue on the roads “as long as it takes”
Farmers will remain on these roads “as long as it takes,” he said. Luc Smessaertvice president of the majority agrarian union Fédération Nationale des Syndicats d’Exploitants Agricoles (FNSEA), while peasants organized makeshift camps in the Paris region with bales of straw, water cisterns and portable toilets. “A little less than 10,000 farmers mobilized” on Monday, with “close to 5,000 tractors,” said a source from the French National Police.
The sector considered the measures announced on Friday by the Prime Minister Gabriel Attalsuch as eliminating the increase in the rate of diesel for non-agricultural use and aid to sectors in crisis.
Symbol of increasing pressure, Macron met with several of his ministers after remaining in the background during the protests, and the government spokesperson, Prisca Thevenot, announced that there will be new measures on Tuesday. Attal, for his part, met this Monday with the FNSEA and Young Farmers.
France lost three quarters of its farmers and ranchers in 50 years, and is increasingly resorting to imports: one chicken in two comes from abroad, as does 60% of its fruits.
Beyond France, the agrarian anger has been heard in several EU countries as Germany, Poland and Romania. On Sunday, Belgian farmers on tractors blocked a major highway calling for changes to the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
“It is not a problem of prices. This is a problem of (production) costs that lead us to ruin,” Cope, the leader of the Asaja agricultural union, said on Spanish radio. Pedro Baratoadvancing protests in Spain starting next week.
Source: Ambito
