French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin this Sunday asked the security authorities to implement an “important and significant protective mechanism” to prohibit farmers from “any entry into Paris.”
The main agricultural unions earlier said they intended to hold an “indefinite siege of the capital” starting at noon on Monday, the start of “all hazards week.”
The mobilization of farmers in France is aimed primarily at denouncing falling incomes, low pensions, administrative difficulties, rising standards and foreign competition.
To avoid these protests, the Minister of the Interior met this Sunday with the Directors General of the Police and the National Gendarmerie, as well as with the Chief of the Paris Police.
The minister reiterated the police’s demand for “restraint” in dealing with farmers.
“The position remains the same: the police must act with great moderation” and intervene only “as a last resort” if the integrity of people is at risk or in the event of serious damage to buildings, the Interior Ministry explained. This was reported by Agence France Presse (AFP).
The president of the main agricultural union, the National Federation of Unions of Agricultural Operators (FNSEA), Arnaud Rousseau this Sunday called on farmers to “be calm and determined.”
“There will be other accidents, no doubt,” Arnaud Rousseau said, referring to what happened earlier this week in Pamiers, southwest France, where a farmer and his daughter were killed by a car while trying to cross an obstacle.
The FNSEA president warned that the accident had opened the door to “an all-hazards week.”
“Either because the government does not listen to us, or because the anger will be such that everyone will take their responsibility,” he noted.
The protest by French farmers echoes that of their German counterparts, who have mobilized since late December against agricultural diesel tax reforms adopted by Olaf Scholz’s German government.