2024-01-19 22:33:26
Rural Coordination, the second largest French agricultural union, plans to organize “actions throughout France” on Thursday January 25 to denounce the “lack of consideration” of local and European policies towards the agricultural world.
“Actions are planned almost everywhere in France,” the president of the union, Véronique Le Floc’h, told AFP on Friday. She mentions road “radar covering” operations to denounce “overadministration” but also hopes for “more spectacular actions because farmers can’t take it anymore”.
“If we do not have an awakening of politicians and a revolt of farmers, the end of agriculture will increase,” predicts the union leader, also a milk producer in Brittany.
This Friday evening, the Elysée announced that “The President of the Republic asked the Minister of the Interior (Gérald Darmanin, Editor’s note) to instruct the prefects to go this weekend to meet farmers and their representative organizations.
And the presidency added: “He wants them to discuss directly the issues they express, as close as possible to the field, as the Minister of Agriculture”, Marc Fesneau, “will do tomorrow” (Saturday) during of a trip whose location was not specified, she added.
A “yellow vest style” movement
Véronique Le Floc’h believes that we are heading “towards a movement where everyone would be involved, like the Yellow Vests”. “I am called by [les secteurs de] fishing, public works, construction, everyone has the same feeling,” she says.
Often presented as being to the right of the majority union FNSEA, the Rural Coordination denounces “the inconsistencies of French policy which does not defend us” and a European Union (EU) that is both “ultra liberal with free trade agreements and ultra eco-friendly”.
The union also plans to question MEPs and officials from the European Commission on January 24 in Brussels. Mentioning the possible integration of Ukraine into the EU, Véronique Le Floc’h affirms that “the EU wants to kill agriculture in the West to relocate it to the East”
Discontent is also growing among our European neighbors
In Germany, Romania and Poland, farmers’ demonstrations have been increasing in recent weeks. In France, a few weeks before the Agricultural Show (February 24 to March 3 in Paris), anger is also expressed.
Friday, traffic on the A64 motorway between Toulouse and Bayonne was blocked by farmers in Haute-Garonne. Tuesday, in the same region, hundreds of tractors and agricultural trucks from several departments converged in Toulouse at the initiative of the local FNSEA and Young Farmers. They denounced pell-mell the increase in charges, standards deemed excessive or even the lack of consideration.
Asked by AFP to know if a national mobilization was planned soon, the FNSEA had not responded late Friday afternoon.
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