“We are still at the same point” as on Sunday, “we are blocked,” Patrick Legras, spokesperson for Rural Coordination, the second largest French agricultural union, told AFP early Monday morning.
Several tractors were in “Rambouillet, Orveau, Meaux and on the RN4 east of Paris,” he told AFP. According to him, on the RN4, due to blockades by the police, motorists’ light vehicles are also at a standstill.
Request “a drop-off point in Paris”
Christian Convers, general secretary of the union, said he sent a message to the Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau and to the Prime Minister’s chief of staff to ask for “a base in Paris”. The authorities can provide “the necessary supervision but we assure that there will be no problem of overflow”, he added.
“That the parliamentarians can come and talk with us for a moment, and we will leave. We are not here to camp in Paris, we are not here to annoy Parisians,” he said on RMC.
A few convoys of tractors set off on Sunday from different regions of France, but none returned to the capital, which the last vacationers were leaving before the start of the school year.
Convers was briefly arrested by the police this Sunday late afternoon in Paris, when he arrived – by car – to participate in a symbolic gathering at Place du Brazil, in protest against the recent trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur countries (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay).
This agreement is accused by French farmers of favoring the importation of low-cost products with lower environmental standards than those imposed on them.
Undeclared gatherings prohibited until Monday noon
The Paris police headquarters has banned undeclared gatherings from Sunday 6 p.m. to Monday noon in a large area of central Paris, including in particular Matignon and the Ministry of Agriculture, “considering the calls to demonstrate on January 5, 2025 launched by an agricultural union with a view to blocking the capital.”
The Val-de-Marne prefecture did the same around the Rungis market and on the A6 motorway.
Before converging on Paris, Monday morning, farmers from all over Normandy were to meet in Heudebouville on the edge of the A13, between Vernon and Rouen, Damien Cornier of Rural Coordination in Normandy told AFP, reached by telephone.
Other gathering places were planned to the north, west and south of the capital.
“We are asking to have the same production standards as other countries, we are asking for reductions in controls on farms and increases in controls in supermarkets where we find products that do not meet our standards,” he said. explained Cornier who grows cereals and beets in Andelys (Eure).
Unions received at Matignon on January 13
“We found sugar and flour coming from Ukraine in supermarkets, while the manufacturer who buys sugar beets from us is asking us to reduce our production volumes by 15% this year, and the prices at the ton will increase to 23 euros in 2025 compared to 36-38 euros in 2024,” he added.
The actions of the CR, which give it media and union visibility, come on the eve of the launch of the campaign for the elections to the chambers of agriculture, from January 15 to 31. They will determine the new balance of power between agricultural unions, among which the FNSEA is ultra dominant according to the last election of 2019.
The four main unions, including the Rural Coordination, must be received at Matignon on January 13.
letelegramme Fr Trans
