AGEN, France (Reuters): Farmers blocked highways across France and emptied the contents of several trucks carrying foreign-grown vegetables on Thursday as they pressed the government to protect them from cheap imports, rising costs and red tape.
Farmers said the protests, now in their second week after breaking out in the southwest, would continue as long as their demands are not met, posing the first big challenge for new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.
As Attal convened senior ministers, farmers used bales of hay and tractors to block major arteries across the country, the European Union’s biggest agricultural producer.
Crates of tomatoes, cabbages and cauliflowers that one group of farmers said had been imported from neighbouring countries were strewn across the A7 highway that links Marseille and Lyon, France’s second and third biggest cities.
Some farming unions have threatened to blockade Paris. On Thursday, dozens of tractors led a go-slow during rush-hour near Versailles on the southwestern edge of the capital.
The powerful FNSEA farming union late on Wednesday handed the government a list of 100 demands.
Yohann Barbe, FNSEA spokesman, told RMC radio the demands revolved around “helping farmers regain their dignity, their ability to earn a living income, and above all putting an end to the overload of regulations”.
Farmers cite a government tax on tractor fuel, cheap imports, water storage issues, price pressures from retailers and red tape and environmental rules among their grievances.
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