Farmers from across Europe are protesting against the European Union’s agreement with Mercosur. On Friday, Polish farmers will take to the streets of Warsaw, but similar protests are also expected in Lombardy and Brandenburg. Already today – tractors have in turn blocked the French capital, Paris. Protesters parked beneath the Eiffel Tower.
On Thursday morning, farmers from southern France drove several dozen tractors into the streets of Paris to protest against the planned conclusion of a trade agreement between the European Union and the South American bloc Mercosur.
“They are driving around Paris, and in particular passing through the Champs-Élysées,” an AFP spokesman for the farmers’ union Rural Coordination (Koordynacja Obszarów Wiejskich, CR) said. The protesters later gathered beneath the Arc de Triomphe.
Union members want in this way to protest in particular against the agreement with Mercosur countries, but also against the government’s December actions regarding the epidemic of lumpy skin disease in cattle (LSD).
The head of CR in Occitania, Bertrand Venteau, announced that he intends to present the farmers’ demands to French parliamentarians “in a peaceful manner” and at symbolic locations in Paris, even if that were to mean that half of the protest participants “end up in the hands of the police.” An order issued by the Paris prefecture bans tractors from entering certain sensitive areas of the capital, including the grounds of the Élysée Palace as well as the seats of the government, parliament and the agriculture ministry – AFP reported.
Farmers reported that there had been confrontations with the services, which attempted to seize the tractors.
Government spokesperson: This is illegal
French government spokesperson Maud Bregeon said on Thursday that the protest actions undertaken by farmers, including blocking motorways and attempting to reach the parliament building, are illegal. She assured that the Interior Ministry will not allow such actions.
Bertrand Venteau, head of the farmers’ union Rural Coordination (CRP), said that the farmers taking part in the protest want to remain in the capital for as long as possible. He assured that they did not come in order to “destroy.”
“What we would like above all is to meet with the presidents of the National Assembly (the lower house of parliament) and the Senate,” Venteau added. He criticized “an excessive number of regulations” and also spoke of parliamentarians who for 30 years have been “killing French agriculture.”
France’s Interior Ministry, for its part, assured that it is “monitoring the situation very closely” and admitted that police blockades had overnight been “bypassed and breached.” On Wednesday, the authorities issued a regulation intended to ban tractors from entering sensitive locations in the capital, as well as the area around the wholesale food market in Rungis near Paris.
The free trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur is intended to introduce trade preferences for selected agricultural products from Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. In return, Mercosur is to open up to EU industry. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, wanted to officially sign the agreement in Brazil at the end of December, but did not obtain the necessary support from EU member states.