Protesting farmers sought to encircle Paris with tractor barricades and drive-slows on Monday, converging in their lumbering vehicles on France’s capital to pressure the government over the future of their industry, which has been shaken by repercussions of the Ukraine war.
Traffic blockages that farmers began to put in place on major highways heading for Paris — host of the Summer Olympics in six months — and continued protests elsewhere in France promised another difficult week for new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, less than a month into the job.
Attal failed to defuse the farmers’ movement last week with a series of pro-agriculture measures that protesters said fell short of their demands that producing food should be more lucrative, easier and fairer.
Protesters responded with their attention-grabbing plan to converge with their tractors on major highways that serve Paris, hoping to create what they described as a “siege” intended to squeeze more concessions from Attal’s government.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Attal failed to defuse the farmers’ movement last week with a series of pro-agriculture measures that protesters said fell short of their demands that producing food should be more lucrative, easier and fairer.
Protesters responded with their attention-grabbing plan to converge with their tractors on major highways that serve Paris, hoping to create what they described as a “siege” intended to squeeze more concessions from Attal’s government.
“Our goal isn’t to bother or to ruin French people’s lives,” Arnaud Rousseau, president of the influential FNSEA agricultural union, said on RTL radio.
French farmers assert that war-impacted higher prices for fertilizer, energy and other inputs for growing crops and feeding livestock have eaten into their incomes, even making farming untenable for some.
Protesters also argue that France’s massively subsidized farming sector is over-regulated and hurt by food imports from countries where agricultural producers face lower costs and fewer constraints.
Traffic authorities in the Paris area reported protests causing snarls on multiple major highways heading into the capital.
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