French farmers keep up roadblock protests, pressuring government

French farmers persisted on Tuesday in erecting roadblocks along major highways leading into Paris for a second consecutive day, intensifying pressure on the government for further concessions amid a deepening standoff. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal is set to address parliament, unveiling new measures aimed at placating the farmers’ discontent over their working conditions. This crisis marks his most significant challenge since assuming office under President Emmanuel Macron earlier this month. The protests, spanning over a week, have now reached the capital, where tractors, hay bales, and assorted objects have impeded motorists from accessing Paris via several key routes since Monday. While the government has thus far adopted a cautious approach towards the demonstrators, it has made it unequivocally clear that any attempts to block Paris’s primary airports or the expansive Rungis wholesale food market to the city’s south would be deemed unacceptable. According to AFP, citing a police source, around 1,000 farmers and 500 vehicles had been involved in Monday’s actions and they appeared intent on keeping up the protest until Friday. A convoy of producers who left on Tuesday morning from the southwestern town of Limoges heading for Rungis changed route after being blocked by gendarmes, organisers said. Armoured vehicles of the gendarmerie have been deployed around Rungis to ensure food supplies are not disrupted. Farmers were however seeking to block roads heading to the airport of the southwestern city of Toulouse, which is surrounded by agricultural regions. Meanwhile, farmers spent the night in tractors on key routes heading to the capital. “The night was short, we’ll have to bounce back but we’re up for it”, said Samuel Vandaele of the FDSEA farmers’ union for the Paris region, under a motorway bridge some 30 kilometres outside of Paris. But he added: “We all want to return to our farms and our animals.” Attal is due to announce new measures in a speech to parliament, after the main farmers union judged that a first battery of measures announced on Friday did not go far enough. “The watchword is to stay as long as we do not have an answer to the main issues”, Thomas Robin, a cereals farmer producer and also of the FDSEA, told AFP. French farmers are angry about incomes, red tape and environmental policies they say undermine their ability to compete with other countries and have left France increasingly dependent on imports. Ecologists however fear more concessions from the government could undermine its environmental pledges. With inputs from agencies