France’s top farmers’ union on Friday announced plans to blockade major roads around Paris, upping the pressure on the government to respond to their protests against low food prices and excessive bureaucracy. As of Friday afternoon, major roads into Paris and other major cities were blocked by tractor convoys.
Facing his first major crisis, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal was expected to offer concessions as ministers scramble to keep discontent from spreading months ahead of European Parliament elections.
The French protests on Friday followed a demonstration in Brussels on Wednesday, where a transnational coalition of European farmers gathered outside the European Parliament to describe how their entire sector is on the cusp of obliteration due to the EU’s ‘green transition,’ warning that they plan to take to the streets ahead of June’s European elections.
Farmers gathered in Place du Luxembourg shortly after 11:30 a.m. in an event partially coordinated by the think tank MCC Brussels in conjunction with the French farmers group Coordination Rurale which has taken a lead role in the current protests hitting the country this week.
Speaking to The European Conservative in the shadow of the Parliament building, president of the Belgian ABS farmers union Hendrik Vandamme described how he and a pan-European alliance of agricultural producers wished to counter the undue influence of the EU’s green lobby, and warned that politicians were forgetting the essential link between farming and society.
He was joined by members of the Dutch BBB political movement, which successfully won last year’s local elections, as well as the more militant Farmers Defence Force, known for their direct action tactics during the recent wave of agrarian protests in the Netherlands.
France has become the latest European country to experience high-profile farmer demonstrations this week while German farmers continue their campaign of blockades against Berlin’s plans to slash diesel subsidies on the already struggling industry.
The Brussels protest was addressed by a selection of right-wing MEPs, including VOX’s Jorge Buxadé, who warned about the impact on farmers of low-quality imports to replace local agricultural products, as well as Reconquête’s Marion Maréchal, who addressed an awaiting press.
In a subsequent press statement, Reconquête candidate Anne-Catherine Girard reaffirmed her party’s commitment to the suspension of all current free trade negotiations as well as the abolishment of inheritance tax, adding that elites had ideological reasons for targeting the profession, saying that
“ideologically, farmers represent a social category: men, white, heterosexual, owners … they are the target of those that our leaders want to replace.”
Similarly, a spokesperson for the rival Rassemblement National blamed the current unease in French and European agriculture on “Europeanist delusions” as well as the “degrowth objectives” of both the Macron government and the European Commission.
There was an Irish presence too, with Helen O’Sullivan from the recently established Farmers Alliance welcoming the opportunity to work with farmers at an international level as her party hopes to field candidates in the upcoming European elections.
At an event hosted by the MCC Brussels after the Brussels demonstration, a panel of farmer representatives from across Europe discussed the potential of a broader political alliance representing food producers in the next parliamentary term.
Sieta van Keimpema, a spokesman for the Dutch Farmers Defence Force, declared it was vital for farmers to take to the streets in the days before this year’s European elections to sway EU elites.
The plight of farmers caused by the economic impact of the much-hyped European Green Deal will be an electoral flashpoint in the upcoming election campaigns as mainstream media outlets warn that right-wing populists are posed to popularise rising discontent and prices.
Additional reporting from Agence France-Presse.
