The French Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, announced yesterday some concessions to farmers to try to quell a protest that plunged the motorways into chaos, many of which were closed during the day. Attal promised to eliminate the planned increase in the tax on agricultural diesel and to increase some compensations when there are pests that affect livestock, and also a deep simplification of administrative rules that affect farms, for example to build water tanks.
After Attal's speech, some blockades began to be lifted, in Bordeaux, Montpellier and Lyon, despite the fact that the announcements were described as insufficient and it is not clear how the protest will continue. There is division among the farmers. The union FNSEA made it known that the mobilization will continue, although Attal was able to take the first step to defuse the crisis.
The head of government spoke in the small Pyrenean town of Montastruc-de-Salies, with 300 inhabitants, in the department of Haute-Garonne, near the Val d'Aran. The staging was very studied, next to a cow farm and surrounded by local people. Attal, who left his notes on a bale of straw, uttered a declaration of love to farmers and ranchers. "France without agriculture is not France, and there is no country", he said. The 34-year-old prime minister, the classic Paris-raised urbanite, promised that President Macron would engage the EU to remove the obligation of 4% of land dedicated to fallow, and that Paris would maintain its veto total to ratify the free trade agreement with Mercosur, a refusal that greatly irritates Spain.
Attal then moved, accompanied in the official vehicle by the farmer Jérôme Bayle, one of the leaders of the protest, to the blockade of the A64 highway, which connects Toulouse de Languedoc with Biarritz, the place where the protest wave began. There he spoke amicably to some of the protesters, mounted on tractors, and then, with a microphone, to those gathered under a bridge. It was another excellent shot. Bayle, a burly man in his forties with the look of a rugby player in a cap and visor turned backwards, made an odd pairing with the Prime Minister. Bayle said the blockade on the A64 will be lifted at midday today.
The Minister of Economy, Bruno Le Maire, had confirmed that there will be more control and sanctions to ensure that the large distribution companies respect the Égalim law, mechanisms designed to ensure that the prices paid to producers are fair.
Attal's intervention was preceded by very tense hours. The farmers caused unprecedented chaos on the motorways, with multiple blockades across the country, on strategic communication axes for European goods traffic and on five main accesses to the capital. The A1 motorway, the main road between Paris and northern Europe, was blocked in both directions by the protest. It had never happened before. The farmers also crossed the border with Spain on the AP-7 highway in La Jonquera.
The first cut of the A1 took place near the town of Senlis, about 50 kilometers north of Paris, and a second blockade south of Lille, near the border with Belgium. Hundreds of tractors entered the expressway to block traffic at the tolls. The prefecture of the department of Oise authorized the cutting of a segment of the strategic A1, which forced the diversion of traffic on secondary roads. The tractors also blocked five motorways on the outskirts of Paris.
Two motorways in the south, the A-7 and the A-9, were cut in a segment of almost 400 kilometers, as announced by the concessionaire Vinci. These are essential roads for truck traffic from Spain to the rest of Europe.
The farmers' protests are being tolerated by the police, who have received orders not to intervene unless the officers themselves are attacked or there are assaults on public buildings. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, has justified this policy and has denied that a double standard is applied with respect to other crises of public order, such as that of the yellow vests, a few years ago. Darmanin recalled that during that revolt there were direct attacks on the agents, something that has not happened until now. In Narbonne, however, the modern headquarters of the Mutualitat Social Agrícola (MSA) was destroyed in a fire, an action that was condemned by Attal and by the president of Occitània, Carole Delga, present with the prime minister in Montastruc -de- Salias
