Angry French farmers drive their tractors into Paris in contemporary protests | EUROtoday

Issued on: 23/02/2024 – 13:53Modified: 23/02/2024 – 13:55

2 min

Dozens of tractors drove peacefully right into a neighbourhood in western Paris carrying flags from Rural Coordination, the farmers’ union that staged the protest. The protesters then posed with their tractors on a bridge over the Seine River with the Eiffel Tower within the background, earlier than heading in direction of the Vauban plaza in central Paris.

The newest protest comes three weeks after farmers lifted roadblocks round Paris and elsewhere within the nation after the federal government supplied over €400 million ($433 million) to deal with their grievances over low earnings, heavy regulation and what they describe as unfair competitors from overseas.

“Save our agriculture,” Rural Coordination mentioned on X, previously Twitter. One tractor was carrying a poster studying: “Death is in the field”.

The convoy briefly slowed site visitors on the A4 freeway, east of the capital, and on the Paris ring-road earlier on Friday morning.

French farmers’ actions are a part of a broader protest motion in Europe towards EU agriculture insurance policies, forms and total enterprise situations.

Read extraWhy French farmers are up in arms: gasoline hikes, inexperienced regulation, EU directives

Farmers complain that the 27-nation bloc’s environmental insurance policies, such because the Green Deal, which requires limits on the usage of chemical compounds and on greenhouse fuel emissions, restrict their enterprise and make their merchandise costlier than non-EU imports.

Other protests are being staged throughout France as farmers search to place strain on the federal government to implement its guarantees.

Government officers have held a collection of conferences with farmers’ unions in latest weeks to debate a brand new invoice meant to defend France’s “agricultural sovereignty”. It shall be debated in parliament this spring.

The authorities’s plan additionally consists of lots of of thousands and thousands of euros in assist, tax breaks and a promise to not ban pesticides in France which can be allowed elsewhere in Europe, which French farmers say places them at an unfair drawback.

French President Emmanuel Macron is to go to the Paris Agricultural Fair on Saturday the place he’s planning to have a “big debate” with farmers, grocery store CEOs and members of environmental teams, his workplace mentioned.

The Paris Agricultural Fair is likely one of the world’s largest farm festivals, drawing crowds yearly.

(FRANCE 24 with AP)