The French farmers carried out their threat this Monday and blocked, almost completely, in both directions, the eight highways entering and exiting Paris with their tractors. To the chaotic situation in the capital region, which worsened as the hours passed, other expressway closures were added in dozens of strategic points throughout the country, including the A9 and A7 highways, the main axis of communication with the Iberian Peninsula.
This is, once again, a major crisis for President Emmanuel Macron and his new Government, headed by Gabriel Attal. The president of the FNSEA union has already warned of “the week of all dangers.” Indeed, less than six months before the start of the Olympic Games, France once again offers the image of a turbulent country, in a permanent crisis of public order and in which the free movement of people and goods cannot be guaranteed.
It was enough to consult the official Sytadin website, on the traffic status in real time, to see the hell that driving meant, especially for trucks. The same thing happened when tuning into station 107.7 from the Vinci Autoroutes dealership. The announcers could not cope with all the places that were impassable.
Motorists and transporters who, despite the prevailing chaos, had no other option than to use their vehicle, had no choice but to resort to the secondary road network, with the extra time and traffic jams that this entailed. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, had urged the day before to avoid travel as much as possible. Many followed the advice.
At the moment the Government does not want to use force to evict the tractors. Doing it is not easy. 15,000 agents were deployed preventively, although with the slogan of “great restraint.” Darmanin’s red lines were to maintain access to the large Parisian central market, Rungis, south of the capital, and to the two airports, Roissy-Charles de Gaulle and Orly. Riot tanks and Centauro armored vehicles of the Gendarmerie were deployed in front of Rungis, imposing vehicles that seem made for war. The minister also asked that foreign trucks not be attacked. He expressly mentioned the Spanish and Portuguese.
The reference to the transport of the Iberian Peninsula was not coincidental. There is a long tradition of assaults on trucks and destruction of their cargo, something that creates diplomatic tension and forces compensation to be sought. But unionists know very well who they are protesting against. The vice president of the FDSEA union in the Gard department, David Sève, highlighted the importance of the blockade on the A9, near Nîmes, because this highway “symbolizes the mass entry of fruits, vegetables and wine that arrives from Spain and that kill us”. Clearer, impossible.
Although the blockade of the capital is for now external, some farmer leaders do not rule out going further and entering the city, or at least on the ring road, the Périphérique, so that Parisians feel the effects even more, not only in shortages but also an alteration of their daily lives. For the Government that would be a red line that it cannot tolerate.
Cabinet spokesperson Prisca Thevenot said after the extraordinary Council of Ministers that the Executive’s response will go beyond the concessions announced last Friday by Attal during a visit to a cow farm in Haute-Garonne, next to the Pyrenees. “We need to go further,” added Thevenot.
The Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau, revealed some of the reinforced measures that are planned to be applied with distributors to satisfy the demands of farmers and ranchers. In addition to guaranteeing the mechanisms to offer a fair price to producers, we want, for example, greater controls on labeling, so that the real origin of the food appears. The objective is to help citizens become aware and buy national products.
Part of the farmers’ demands do not depend on Paris but on Brussels. That is why they demand more firmness from the president and the Government to defend their interests. In this context, Macron will meet this Thursday in Brussels with the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to study whether some changes can be made to help calm tempers. The meeting will take place on the sidelines of an extraordinary summit on the EU budget. One of the complaints of French farmers is the massive arrival of Ukrainian products.
The opposition parties, from the radical left to the right and the extreme right, take advantage of the situation to express their solidarity with the protest and attack the Government. Marine Le Pen dared to get on a tractor, on Sunday, in her northern electoral fiefdom. There was even the picturesque event that a priest in a cassock appeared on a road near Agen, in Lot-et-Garonne, one of the hotbeds of the revolt, to bless the convoy of tractors that left for Paris to join in the “siege” of the capital.
