According to the Guardian’s website, an estimated thousand tractors will participate in the campaign to block traffic in and out of the big city.
French farmers are protesting, among other things, against increased bureaucracy. According to them, the countryside is dying.
There is even greater anger in the background and it is especially against the European Union and its proposed nature restoration decree. It requires member countries to take new environmental measures by 2030.
For example, at least four percent of the current arable area should be left fallow.
It is out of the farmer’s pocketbook.
– It’s about fallow land, trade negotiations, import of agricultural products, raising livestock, over-regulation, farmers’ dissatisfaction, management and all of this, lists the chairman of the local farmer’s association Regis Desrumaux.
The measure is full, so the farmers have announced that they will blockade Paris indefinitely by blocking the highways leading to and from the city with tractors.
According to the British media Guardian’s website, there are up to 1,000 tractors.
“We won’t leave until we’re satisfied”
– Something has to happen, we will not leave until we are satisfied, participant in the protest Judy Peters says sternly in an interview with Reuters.
– The intention was to gather only on Thursday, but we wanted to show that we can be longer. We want to be heard and send a message to the ministers that they have to act or else we will die out little by little, says Nicolas Abbeloos.
Tractors also block highway traffic in Belgium. Some of the farmers have driven their tractors right into the heart of EU decision-making, close to the parliament building in Brussels.
Many participants in the protest sleep their nights in the cab of the tractor. Sometimes we gather outside to warm up as a group by the campfires.
A woman who made sandwiches for the protesters along the A16 motorway said she believed there was widespread public support for the demonstration.
– They understand that our measure is full. We cannot do cheap farming. The food basket is important, but you have to be able to live with it, he said in an interview on French television.