At the Elysée and Matignon, a thin film of sweat gleams on the carefully groomed foreheads of Emmanuel Macron and Gabriel Attal. The double head of the executive hoped that the anger of the farmers would weaken and end in disaster. Its planned resurgence this Monday, January 29, risks pushing it to the edge. On Saturday night, farmers from the FNSEA and the Young Farmers (JA) of the greater Paris basin announced that they would begin a “siege of the capital” that day. The two affiliated unions represent the majority of the profession.
“All major roads leading to the capital will be occupied by farmers,” they said. They expect fresh troops from the Paris region, as well as from Normandy and Hauts-de-France. At the same time, the Coordination rurale, a minority in France but essential in Lot-et-Garonne, will leave Agen for Rungis, the wholesale market located in Val-de-Marne, the larder of Île-de-France. The determination of the Lot-et-Garonnais has undoubtedly spurred the majority union, which does not want to give the impression of accommodating the band-aids brandished by the government.
For the government, the equation is complicated. Gabriel Attal fired most of his shots on Friday in Montastruc-de-Salies, Haute-Garonne, where he listed a string of measures to extinguish the embers. After selling off the missions of the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB), canceling the increase in non-road diesel, and expediting aid promised to livestock affected by the epizootic hemorrhagic disease (MHE), the Prime Minister is now out of arrows. Ordered to show imagination, Marc Fesneau, the Minister of Agriculture, hastened to act as after-sales service, on Saturday, January 27, on Franceinfo. He mentioned announcements about vineyards and the cash flow of farms for the coming week.
The fate of viticulture is a particularly significant issue in Gard, where serious incidents broke out on Friday evening. A fire at the Customs Office in Nîmes caused extensive damage to the building and vehicles. The A9 highway remained closed in the department on Saturday, a rare event as the black spots on the highway network disappeared one after the other. Set up ten days ago and emblematic of the movement, the blockade of Carbonne on the A64, Haute-Garonne, was lifted at noon. The Occitan professionals who were stationed there had promised to do so after Gabriel Attal’s intervention in Montastruc.
The trend was confirmed on the major axes of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. In the afternoon, farmers in Charente-Maritime abandoned the blockade set up in Saintes on the A10 and left in convoy towards Pons and Saint-Jean-d’Angély. A similar decision was made by the troops of the Rurale Coordination on the A62, in Lot-et-Garonne, where cleaning operations were underway on Saturday afternoon. However, the farmers of the FDSEA (Departmental Federation of Agricultural Unions) who held access to the A63 motorway in Bayonne, in the Basque Country, were not prepared to leave the camp.
This residual blockade echoes a few sporadic outbursts, in the region and elsewhere in the metropolis. In eastern Gironde, small groups of farmers hindered the opening of supermarkets. This happened in Libournais, in Pineuilh. As well as in Port-Sainte-Foy-et-Ponchapt, a few kilometers away in the Dordogne.
This Saturday was marked by a white march organized in Pamiers, Ariège, in memory of two women who died following the accident on January 23. But given the gloomy mood of the base, the break is likely to be short. Even before the announcement of the show of force in Paris, the authorities knew that they would have new mobilizations to manage from Monday morning.
In the region, one of the highlights is expected to take place in Langon, in the south of Gironde, where more than a hundred tractors are expected by the Viti 33 collective, supported by the Confédération paysanne. The latter, which claims to be the voice of a peasant model, also finds the measures listed by Gabriel Attal insufficient and/or irrelevant. Members of the Confédération paysanne were seen on the streets of Pau, in Béarn, this Saturday. A testament to an unpredictable and protean movement of anger. A daunting task for the government.
