“We will not reduce the pressure as long as the commitments [made by the government] are not kept,” warned, Thursday February 15, on RTL the president of the majority agricultural union FNSEA, Arnaud Rousseau, nine days before the Show of agriculture. “Sometimes there can be statements or big phrases. What we want is for this to come to fruition (…) on our farms,” he added.
After the revolt of farmers throughout France in January, the government committed itself, to appease them, to measures ranging from the payment of emergency aid to simplification decrees through an agricultural law and changes to Brussels.
Despite government commitments, numerous mobilizations took place throughout France on Thursday. In Poitiers, at the call of the Rural Coordination, demonstrators in tractors met at two gathering points. According to the independent farmers’ movement Resistance Paysanne and the regional daily Center Presse, the two convoys will reach the prefecture this evening.
Blocking of prefectures
In Montauban, farmers also planned to set up a camp in front of the prefecture for “an indefinite period”. Around a hundred of them mobilized towards the city center. According to information from La Dépêche du Midi, the main entrance to the departmental territorial directorate was covered with boards, agricultural tarpaulins and even manure. A delegation of farmers was received by the prefect of Tarn-et-Garonne, added BFM-TV.
In Chartres, around sixty farmers are currently blocking the Eure-et-Loir prefecture, reports L’Echo Républicain. Unions and non-union members hope for one thing: to be received by the prefect to “demand accountability on the progress of the implementation of government promises”.
In front of the Lactalis factory, near Bayeux, in Calvados, around twenty farmers were mobilized to denounce the sale of products not made in France and which do not properly remunerate producers, Ouest-France said.
Around a hundred farmers occupied part of the gardens of the national estate of Chambord (Loir-et-Cher), at the call of the local rural coordination, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). Arriving at the end of the morning on a little more than sixty tractors, the farmers parked their machines about a hundred meters from the castle, before deploying protest banners.
The farmers present also demanded, in vain, a trip from the Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau, himself an elected official from the department. The prefect of Loir-et-Cher came to hear their demands, including those on administrative simplification and the income problems encountered by operators, noted AFP. Since the lifting of the blockades, farmers have maintained pressure on the government and threatened new actions.
Protests in Italy and Spain on Thursday
Elsewhere in Europe, more than a thousand farmers demonstrated again on Thursday in Rome, driving tractors onto a large ancient stadium in the city, the Circus Maximus, as part of a mobilization that has lasted for several weeks in Europe. At the same time, a small group gathered at Palazzo Chigi, seat of Giorgia Meloni’s government, while a delegation went Thursday morning to the headquarters of the European Commission in Rome to deliver a letter of demands.
Since the beginning of January, in Italy, farmers have been demonstrating from Sicily to the north of the country against the drop in their income and the rise in their production costs, even if the scale of the movement has not reached the level gatherings in France, Germany or Belgium. They are especially opposed to the price of agricultural fuel and the European Union’s Green Deal, which is supposed to mitigate the consequences of global warming but which, according to them, harms their profession.
In Spain, around fifteen tractors remained parked for around two hours on Thursday in front of the Ministry of Agriculture, in the heart of Madrid, before a meeting with Minister Luis Planas which began shortly before 6 p.m. to protest against the crisis in the sector . The minister receives the three main unions of farmers and breeders (Asaja, COAG and UPA), the day after a meeting with the various representatives of the food sector.
In the rain, some 250 representatives of the sector accompanied by unions, most of whom arrived by bus, obstructed traffic on this major artery of the capital before leaving before 3 p.m. The day before, Spanish farmers had demonstrated as they have been doing for more than a week to denounce the difficulties of the sector, blocking roads almost everywhere in the country, from Seville (south) via Valladolid (north-west), as well as in Catalonia (north-east).
