France's government held a crisis meeting on Thursday, January 25, to come up with answers to farmers blocking highways and demonstrating at public buildings across the country, after a fuel tax rise detonated long-standing resentments. It is the first crisis for recently installed Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who summoned his economy, environment and agriculture ministers for a meeting to decide on aid measures and fend off a possible blockade of the capital.
Farmers were out in force on many motorways, city ring roads and traffic roundabouts nationwide. Some routes were blocked around southern city Avignon and towards Marseille, according to the traffic information website Bison Futé. And in the western city of Bordeaux, around 15 tractors launched a go-slow in both directions around the ring road.
Farmers say they are being squeezed from multiple directions, with buyers from supermarkets and the food industry crushing their margins and complex environmental rules on issues like leaving land fallow and pesticide use.
The last straw for many was the government's move to eliminate a tax break on diesel fuel for their farm equipment – despite an attempt to soften the blow by phasing it out between now and 2030. A new rebate on the diesel tax could be one of the government's measures, while some lawmakers have even called for minimum prices for produce.
The largest farmers' union, the FNSEA, called late Wednesday for "immediate answers on pay", including urgent assistance for "sectors worst hit by the crisis" – and in the long term, launching "a project to reduce regulations." For the government, "it would be a big risk to wait until Friday to announce something," warned Karine Duc, co-president of the Coordination Rurale union in the southwestern Lot-et-Garonne department.
The protests have made for a rare alliance between rival farmers' unions, with left-wing Confédération Paysanne joining the heavyweight FNSEA and Coordination Rurale.
President Emmanuel Macron's government is at pains to avoid a repeat of the 2018-19 Yellow Vests protests – also triggered by a rise in diesel prices – that saw massive mobilization and clashes with police. Ministers have also eyed nervously previous mass turnouts on similar issues by farmers in Germany, Poland and the Netherlands.
In Brittany's capital Rennes, fishermen could join the farmers at a demonstration outside the region's prefecture in a sign of bubbling frustration in other sectors boiling over. Much of fishing has been banned for a month along much of France's Atlantic coast in a measure to protect dolphins and porpoises, at an estimated cost of tens of millions of euros to the 450 ships affected.
In a sign the government hopes to keep tensions low, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on Wednesday ordered local authorities to exercise "great restraint" and deploy police only as a "last resort." Union representatives in Bordeaux said Thursday their protest would be "more respectful" than Wednesday's in nearby Agen, in which tyres and straw were burned outside the prefecture.
Speaking at a blockade on the A16 motorway, FNSEA head Rousseau said "at this stage" there were no plans to blockade Paris. But Régis Desmureaux, his lieutenant for the Oise department north of the capital, told broadcaster BFM-TV that "we're moving forward about 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) a day and we'll definitely be on Paris' doorstep on Friday or Saturday." Farmers driving tractors ran another go-slow operation early Thursday on the N12, a major road running west of the capital.