French farmers locked down Paris on Monday as part of a protest against agricultural reforms, cutting off links with the outside world with tractors and barricades. Farmers say this is not going far enough.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who has only been in office for a month, last week sought to quell protesters with reforms that include measures to make food production easier and more profitable.
Farmers staged a “siege” on Monday to urge further concessions.
“We came to protect French agriculture,” farmer Christophe Rossignol told The Associated Press. “We go from crisis to crisis.”
Some of the vehicles participating in the protests carried placards declaring: “No farmers, no food” and “The end of us means starvation for you.”
Demonstrators said they felt left out by the central government in urban areas and that many politicians were not taking the needs of rural French people seriously.
According to the government, approximately 15,000 police officers have been deployed around Paris to ensure the security of the city itself.
“Our aim is not to embarrass the French people or ruin their lives,” Arnaud Rousseau, president of the FNSEA agricultural union, told RTL radio. “Our goal is to put pressure on the government to quickly find a solution to the crisis.”
Farmers in the French-speaking Wallonia region of southern Belgium have banded together to launch similar protests near Brussels.
Demonstrators in France and Belgium complained of soaring fertilizer and business costs due to the nearly two-year war in Ukraine. Before the war, Ukraine was one of the world’s largest food producers.
French farmers also called for deregulation, saying the government was squeezing domestic agriculture to the point where it could no longer compete with rivals, mainly from Eastern Europe.
Farmers have taken to the highways of several European countries in recent months, as agricultural policy takes center stage in the continent’s political debate. Last month, German protesters took tractors into Berlin over diesel fuel price demands.
The Associated Press contributed.
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