By tractor or car, farmers from the Rural Coordination (CR) tried on Monday January 6 to reach Paris, held back or slowed down by the police, while the Minister of Agriculture warned that the capital should not be blocked “on a back-to-school day”. On the eve of the start of the electoral campaign for the chambers of agriculture, the yellow hats of the second agricultural union want to make their voice heard: against free trade agreements, against unfair competition, including intra-European competition. , and against controls on farms.
Monday morning, around ten tractors and around fifteen cars which were parked at the Ablis Nord industrial zone (Yvelines) forced their way and entered the N10 national road, before being blocked at Essarts -the King, we learned from a police source. Another convoy was blocked in Orveau, in Essonne. On the other hand, small convoys were progressing again in Seine-et-Marne (on the RN4 towards Paris) and in the Rhône, where around thirty tractors were moving on departmental road 342 towards Vourles, towards the motorway. A7.
“Not here to camp in Paris”
While saying she understood the “concern” of the operators, the Minister of Agriculture Annie Genevard warned that there was no question of letting the capital be paralyzed, while several representatives of the CR have affirmed in recent days that They wanted to block Paris or the Rungis international market. “No, we are not blocking, in addition a day back to school, a day back to school for the French. No blockages which ultimately compromise the image of farmers among the French. And no violence,” she said. accused, interviewed on TF1.
The minister mentioned a mobilization of 200 farmers and around fifty tractors throughout the territory. Recalling that Prime Minister François Bayrou would receive the agricultural unions next Monday, she considered that “the urgency that they put forward to be received now, here immediately”, was not really justified.
On the ground, the demonstrators deplored being blocked simply because of “wearing a yellow cap” and said they were determined to move forward. “We are going to force the roadblocks,” Sébastien Héraud, member of the CR steering committee, declared Monday morning on France Info.
The union’s general secretary, Christian Convers, said he sent a message to Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff to ask for “a base in Paris”. The authorities can provide “the necessary supervision but we assure that there will be no problem of overflow”, he added. “That the parliamentarians can come and discuss with us for a moment, and we will leave. We are not here to camp in Paris, we are not here to annoy the Parisians,” he said on RMC. For the moment, no convoy has entered the capital, where traffic was usual this Monday morning.
Christian Convers was briefly arrested by the police late Sunday afternoon in Paris, as he arrived – by car – to participate in a symbolic gathering at Place du Brazil, in protest against the recent trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur countries (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay). This agreement is accused by French farmers of favoring the importation of low-cost products with lower environmental standards than those imposed on them.
Snail operation in Lyon
The Paris police headquarters has banned undeclared gatherings from Sunday 6:00 p.m. to Monday 12:00 p.m. in a large area of central Paris, including in particular Matignon and the Ministry of Agriculture, “considering the calls to demonstrate on January 5, 2025 launched by an agricultural union with a view to ‘blocking the capital'”. The Val-de-Marne prefecture did the same around the Rungis market and on the A6 motorway.
Elsewhere in France, a convoy of farmers significantly slowed down traffic south of Lyon on Monday morning with a snail operation. Around twenty tractors, which left around 5:00 a.m. from Saint-Didier-sous-Riverie (Rhône), arrived at Oullins-Pierre-Bénite around 8:00 a.m., after having gone up the A450 at low speed, lines of vehicles slowed down at behind, noted an AFP journalist. “We are not here to annoy people either,” Serge Genevay, member of the Rural Coordination (CR) and president of CR69, told AFP. “We have had no response for a year from all the promises that were made,” he regretted. “All the farmers are fed up.”
This mobilization comes before the professional elections, organized from January 15 to 31, which will determine the new balance of power between agricultural unions: the CR, which has gained visibility thanks to punchy actions since last winter, hopes stealing around fifteen rooms from the hegemonic FNSEA-Young Farmers alliance.